


Follow Me, Follow You

by Kachelofen



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 08:34:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kachelofen/pseuds/Kachelofen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years post-series.  Brian and Justin are preparing for Justin’s return home, but there are unanticipated problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**PART  ONE**

 

It was a delight to have lunch with Sabrina Cartwright. She was smart and funny, could tell anecdotes with flair and had in general saved me from a very dull couple of hours with her cretin of a husband. She was good-looking, too, in a Jennifer Taylor kind of way: stylish clothing, discreet make-up, perfect hairstyle and skin as flawless as it could be for a woman in her fifties. Now, here was a woman who knew how to moisturize.

Sinclair Cartwright was obviously very fond of his wife, as well he should be, because she was a few leagues above him in terms of sophistication, charm and personality. He was lucky to have her and I could only assume that she had married him for his money. Hey, I wasn’t judging. You did what you had to do in life. To her credit, she appeared genuinely fond of her husband, too, so maybe I was wrong. Or maybe he was one hell of a fuck. What do I know about breeder relationships anyway? Or any relationship, for that matter.  

My cell phone vibrated annoyingly against my leg as we were winding down lunch with a leisurely coffee. It was the second call already; the first one had been between the starter and the main course. Somebody really wanted to talk to me. Most people adhered to my wishes when I was away on business and only phoned me late at night for non-urgent phone calls. Cynthia would call during the day if anything came up that I needed to know about and that was okay: it was her job and my clients usually understood business. Private phone calls were a different matter. They made me look unprofessional.

I knew it wasn’t Cynthia. She would have left a message during the first call and then waited for me to call her back. It wouldn’t be Justin, either. He was way too busy during the day or even if he wasn’t, he knew that I would be. Talking to me at night had other advantages for him as well – for both of us. Michael rarely called me nowadays anyway. He had a business to run and a family to go home to and he had got heavily involved with the Vic Grassi House over the last couple of years. So that left only one other person: Lindsay.

I picked up the tab, making it clear that I would not allow Cartwright to do so, even though _he_ had asked _me_ to lunch. It was just good business practice and he didn’t squabble. People with his kind of money never did. It was just too insignificant a point to even consider, although I had the impression that he was the sort of person for whom it would become significant very quickly if I _hadn’t_ insisted on paying. Like I said, cretin. But one with a million-dollar account, so I would make nice for the sake of the business. Didn’t I always? Truth be told, there were very few people I did business with whom I respected and even fewer whom I genuinely liked.

Sabrina invited me to a soiree that evening at some gallery she was associated with and I liked her enough to say I would turn up for an hour or so, but wouldn't be able to stay long, as I had to catch an early flight to Toronto in the morning. Then I declined a ride in their car and excused myself. I wanted a smoke, so I walked a little down the busy street, already pulling out my cigarettes and my cell phone. Yep, it had been Lindsay alright. Two messages.

I listened to the messages, while looking for a quieter place and finally diving into an alleyway between two restaurants. It led into a yard full of dumpsters and wooden crates, but at least it was quiet, with only faint noises from the restaurant kitchens spilling out through open doors. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t feeling at home in alleyways anyway.

_“Brian. It’s Lindsay. I need to talk to you. Call me as soon as you get this.”_

That was standard fare. It was never: ‘call me when you have a minute’, it was always: ‘as soon as you get this’. Everything Lindsay did nowadays was life or death, or at least she always managed to make it sound like it was, even when she didn’t say it. To be fair, it hadn’t always been like that, only over the last seven months since she had split up with Melanie again. And it had only got worse when Melanie had started a new relationship five weeks ago. I was tired of Lindsay’s phone calls, when she would bitch about Mel and ‘that woman’ for an eon, while ostensibly calling to see how I was or to talk about Gus. God, I really hoped it wasn’t one of those phone calls again. Because I didn't have time for this. I had another meeting with Cartwright and his people in two hours.

_”Brian. Why aren’t you answering your phone? Are you trying to avoid me? Call me. It’s about Gus.”_

Fuck. Now I was worried. I speed-dialed her number while I lit up, trying not to let my mind wander to scenarios that I really did not want to think about. But it always did when it was about Gus. Or Justin.

_“Brian?”_

“Lindsay. What’s wrong with Gus?”

_“Nice to hear your voice, too, Brian. Nothing’s wrong with Gus. What makes you think that?”_

“Your message, Lindsay. You said it was about Gus.”

_“It is. It’s about this weekend.”_

“So, Gus is all right?”

_“Of course, he is, silly! I didn’t mean to worry you. It’s just that my friend Katrina has this cottage on Lake Ontario and she’s invited Gus and me to spend the weekend.”_

“Linz. I have a flight booked for tomorrow. You knew I was coming.”

_“I know and I’m really sorry. But the cottage is usually booked out and there was a cancelation and this is the only weekend we can go and I haven’t been away for so long. It would really do me good to relax a bit. And it would be good for Gus, too.”_

“Why does _he_ have to go? I’ll be there by lunchtime tomorrow. I could spend the weekend with him and you could _really_ relax. Have a childfree weekend.”

_“But I want Gus to come. Katrina’s twins are just a little younger. It will be fun for him. And you know I like to see you when you’re here. You hardly ever visit anyway.”_

I took a drag from my cigarette and tried to stay calm. Getting angry never worked with Lindsay. “I have a flight booked, Lindsay. And I want to see my son. It’s been four weeks already. Why can’t he just stay with me for the weekend? We could ask him if he’d rather go to the lake or spend time with his old man. And I’ll see you on my next visit.” What I didn’t say was that I wanted to see for myself how Gus was coping with the new player in all their lives. I didn’t know Mel’s new squeeze, but it had to have some kind of impact on the boy.

" _We're leaving tonight, Brian. To make it worthwhile...have a long weekend.”_

“Gus would miss school tomorrow.”

_“He can afford to. He’s top of the class.”_

That he was, but I still wouldn't want to give him the impression that school was something you could blow off for an impromptu vacation. And when the hell had _I_ become the responsible parent? And then suddenly it hit me, the reason why he couldn't be left with me. It wasn’t me at all, who was the problem. But I had to try, knowing how useless it would be: “Gus could stay with Melanie for the night. That way, he could still go to school tomorrow and I could pick him up and spend the weekend. Then I’ll hand him over to you when you get back on Sunday and we could go for dinner before I fly back on Monday.”

There was an icy silence for a few moments. Then the clipped response: _“It’s not Mel’s weekend.”_

It sure wasn’t, because no way would Melanie let Lindsay get away with depriving her of her son. She didn’t have to. She had rights. “She's his mother, Lindsay. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. I could call her and ask her.”

_“No! She would use it to poison Gus’s mind against me, making me out to be a bad mother. And I’m sure she won’t want to miss spending time with that woman. And I don’t even know her. I’m worried who she's letting into Gus’s life.”_

I had to wonder if Melanie knew Katrina and was wondering who Lindsay was letting into Gus’s life. Or if she was worried how much Linz was poisoning Gus’s mind. I certainly was. But it was early days yet. The pain of the separation, and especially being replaced, was still raw and the munchers were only proving what the breeders had known all along: that divorces were painful and often vitriolic. It wouldn't have been so bad, if I hadn't had the sneaky suspicion that a little further down the line everything would get back to normal with a big reconciliation and maybe even – God help us! – a renewal of their vows. It couldn’t come soon enough for me – or Gus and Jenny. And who knew? Maybe a weekend away would get Lindsay out of the crabby mood she had been in for far too long. If she got laid in the process, all the better for her. But for now, giving Melanie extra time with Gus was a no-no.

 _"You can see Gus next weekend,_ ” she tried to assuage me.

I had to laugh. “No. I can’t. It’s Mel’s weekend next week.” Melanie would fight tooth and nail for that, in fact, she had done when they had first split up, demanding her rights and even threatening to go to court. Everything else she had let go with surprising equanimity, but on this one point she had been adamant. At first, they had swapped the kids every second weekend, a concession on Melanie’s part as well, because legally she didn't have to share Jenny – with Michael, yes, but not with Lindsay. Then they had realized that Gus and Jenny never saw each other that way and now each of the munchers had both kids every other weekend. So the question was, where would Jenny be this weekend? Ah well, not my concern or responsibility. Things were complicated enough with just Gus and Lindsay.

_“Well, she can...”_

“Linz,” I interrupted her. “I’ll come up the weekend after that. Make sure that Gus is there then. And I want to speak to him tonight. I’ll call him around six. And Linz... you _are_ coming back, aren’t you?”

I could hear her draw an indignant breath and wished I could take the words back. It never paid to rile Lindsay up. But I was angry that she was fucking up my plans for the weekend. _“How can you even say that? It was just once and that was years ago. It’s not fair that you always bring that up and make me sound flighty. I was in a very bad place. I wouldn't deprive you of our son.”_  Well, it wasn’t just me she had to worry about if she ever decided to disappear with Gus. And much as I liked being part of the ‘our’ in ‘our son’, I was under no illusion whom it was Gus would feel the most deprived of.

“Just keep the... eh... 27th free for Gus. And one more thing, Lindsay: next time you tell me you need to speak to me about Gus, make sure I know that he’s all right.”

_“Oh, Brian, I didn’t mean to worry you, honestly. And it was about Gus, really.”_

One day I would have to tell her that people who used the word ‘honestly’ were usually anything but.

“Okay. Tell him I’ll call him tonight. And I’ll let you know when my flight is for the weekend after next.”

_“Okay. Thank you, Brian. I knew you’d understand.”_

“Bye, Lindsay.”

_“Bye, Brian.”_

Yeah, I understood. Lindsay was hurting from the separation, from the fact that Mel had found someone new and appeared to be moving on. That hurt impacted on everything around her. She responded by clinging desperately to what she had left, namely Gus. And sometimes it felt like her hetero fantasies of the three of us being a happy family had made a reappearance, too. But I had put a stop to that effectively, by always turning up with Justin for my visits until she got the message without me ever having to say a word. (Justin’s idea, of course, clever devil.) She and I had finally reached a sensible relationship, when Mel started seeing ‘that’ woman. What was her name again? Serena, I thought. Gus told me. It would all blow over, of course, and I really wouldn’t care if it didn’t make Gus so unhappy. Ah well, there was really not that much I could do about it. I would call him, smooth things over and make sure he knew it wasn’t my idea to postpone.

In the taxi on the way back to my hotel, I went through the things I had to do in my head. My unexpected free weekend had certain possibilities if... I called Cynthia and asked her to cancel my flight to Toronto and try to book me a flight to New York instead, with a return flight on Sunday.

At the hotel, I took a shower, changed into a different suit and was just going over some notes for my meeting, when Cynthia called to tell me she had a flight for me at lunchtime on Friday. She really was invaluable. We talked about some work stuff that probably could have waited for my return, but I had forty minutes to kill, so we might as well get some business out of the way while we were on the phone.

 

An hour later, I sat through yet another meeting with Cartwright. God, did that guy like to micro-manage! My pitch had been flawless, but the minutiae he was interested in had really not been worked out yet and I had to be on the ball to make sure he did not realize that. It wasn’t that I was badly prepared, it was more that he wanted to discuss things that were so far down the line in the campaign that they had only taken the vaguest shape in my head yet. Well, he was the client and I pulled it off well enough. I always did. I finally felt confident that I would not return to Pittsburgh just to be informed that Cartwright Enterprises wouldn't be signing on the dotted line after all. This one was safely in the bag. I could tell.

 

At the hotel, I showered again and changed into another suit. It seemed excessive even to me, but I really did not like putting on clean clothes without a shower. I ordered just a snack from room service as I'd had an extensive lunch. Then I phoned Gus.

Lindsay answered but passed the phone to him pretty quickly, which wasn't always the case. I asked him how he was and listened to his usual talk about school and hockey practice and friends I didn’t really know, leaving me struggling to appear as if I knew exactly whom he was talking about. After a while, I asked him if he was looking forward to his weekend and I could hear the effort in his voice to sound enthusiastic. Fun weekends were never as much fun for kids as their parents thought. I made sure he knew that I had been fully prepared to come up and was disappointed, which by now was only half-true, and assured him that nothing would stop me from visiting the weekend after next.

He seemed content with that, but his lackluster response to anything I said told me enough about what he would have preferred to do this weekend. One of the last things he said to me was: " _When you come up, Dad, are we taking Jenny with us again?”_

“Of course. Unless you want to do something that she’s not old enough for?” Trying to give him an out, in case he wanted to be rid of his sister for once but didn't want to say it outright. Either possibility was fine with me. Jenny was easy enough to please and she liked me, which helped.

_“No. No, I’d really like Jenny to come along.”_

“Then we'll take her.”

We discussed for a little while what we would be doing that weekend, but, as it was pretty much just a postponement from this weekend, there wasn’t that much to say. It was more about reassuring him that everything was still on. Eventually I ended the call without talking to Lindsay again.

It was painful for me to listen to Gus recently. He was making such an effort to support his mother, it made you want to weep. He basically agreed to whatever she wanted just to make her happy. I could hardly tell him that it was not his job to make her happy or even in his power. None of us had that power. I was angry with Lindsay sometimes for being so self-absorbed that she didn’t seem to realize what it was doing to her son. But on the other hand, I could be sure that she wouldn't take her unhappiness out on him the same way either of my parents had. Her clinginess would do him far less harm in the long run. And she had been there for me enough times that I would be supportive for a little while longer. She had earned it.

 

At the gallery, I spent a couple of hours chatting to Cartwright’s associates, whom Sabrina was kind enough to introduce me to, trying to drum up some more business. I also looked at the artwork for a bit to scope out Justin’s ‘competition’. As far as I was concerned, he had nothing to worry about – neither from the art, nor the artist. Of course, Justin never worried about competition anyway, his art just needed to live up to some unfathomable standard in his own head. I bought a catalogue anyway, just so that we could mock together.

 

When I got back to the hotel, I tried to call Justin, but it went straight to voicemail. He must be painting – again. I hadn’t spoken to him since Monday evening, when we'd had a very satisfying phone sex session. All the other times I had phoned him, I had only got the voicemail service. I only left a message once, on Wednesday, and he had sent one back to me at half past three in the morning, saying that he was inspired and practically lived in the studio this week.

He'd been sharing a studio for two years now, a pretty nice one, too, which met all of his artistic requirements and most of my safety ones. One of the other artists was a girl who sculpted weird-ass contraptions, which she then endowed with pretentious titles. Well, what could you expect from a person called Saffron Serendipity Smith? The other guy was new for the last seven months, Caspar Richardson. Before that, there had been a guy named Roger, but he'd had a car accident and moved back home to his parents somewhere in Delaware.

Now, Caspar was a different kettle of fish altogether. He was really young, around twenty, hot in a twinkie kind of way, and he painted, like Justin, only not with quite as much talent – or any at all. But since his parents had money and were willing to indulge his fancy, he could pretty much afford to be unsuccessful and aimless. Only he wasn’t aimless at all. Having bonded with Justin over their art, he was pretty determined in his pursuit. In all the previous months, I had seen both Saffron and Roger only two or three times. Caspar was around all the time. He was always at the studio, or at Justin’s place, or going out with Justin, or phoning him.

Was I worried? Not on your life. He was no competition really, too young, too eager. He was material for a quick fuck, which I trusted Justin would not be stupid enough to indulge in, since he would still have to share a studio with him afterwards. Otherwise, they were pretty tight though. I once asked Justin how he could expect to have a real friendship with a guy who was so obviously in love with him. He just stared at me, barely able to refrain from laughing, until I realized that the question was rather funny coming from me, if not downright hypocritical. Then we were both howling with laughter. Still, Caspar’s presence grated on my nerves, even when it was just at the end of the phone line. He seemed to have no sense of boundaries or privacy. It gave me a new appreciation for what Justin had put up with for such a long time when we started out.

 

So, what was it that made me so uneasy? Now that the stress of the pitch was over and I was looking forward to my weekend, I had the time and leisure to wonder why I was even worried. If worried was the right word. Justin had changed. It wasn’t a change for the worse or even an obvious one. He was just... different... somehow. I couldn't pinpoint when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks now and it was only gradually that I had even become aware of it. We saw each other three weekends out of four, as a rule. He also came home for every vacation and in the summer, when Gus came to stay with me for a week. I was in New York a few times a year on business, which meant longer-than-a-weekend visits and sometimes I managed to get a day in on a stopover midweek. Even when the munchers split up and I was in Toronto a lot to help Lindsay and Gus over the worst of it, he was there for every weekend. I had _a lot_ of frequent flyer miles.

Usually we had a fuckfest when we met, until we were both too sore and too tired. Sundays we went out, either he was showing me things of interest he had discovered or to meet the family, if he was home. It worked for us. We both consciously put in a lot of effort to _make_ it work. Sometimes it was hard for me to switch off from work, when I had big projects on or for him to postpone his inspiration and not run off to his studio. But we had learned to talk about it and usually a good fuck took care of these secondary things in our life. It seemed incredible, when I thought about it, that we had managed to keep this up for almost five years.

In general, we didn't talk about our extracurricular activities. It was understood that we wouldn't refrain when the other one wasn't around. No need to talk about it. No desire to talk about it either. I had realized somewhere along the line that Justin didn't really like to compare notes and while I had found it hot at some stage to listen to him describing his latest fuck during phone sex, over time, I found it not only less hot, but uncomfortable somehow. So we stopped doing it and that was fine with both of us. And when we were together, it was just us now. Why waste time with someone else during the short time we had together? He had always been the best fuck I ever had anyway and you could bet your bottom dollar that I had always been his. 

So we fucked and we talked and we went out, but recently there had been something going on with him. He'd had a couple of really good years with his art. In fact, he had a big solo show coming up in November at the Gustafson Gallery, which was a very prestigious gallery indeed. It was his third solo show and he once said to me – during his second year here – that he would come home after his third solo show and keep his career going from Pittsburgh. I remembered a feeling of deep-seated relief when he told me about this show. It was as if I was exhaling a slow breath I had been holding without being aware of it and something inside me sighed ‘finally’. Not that I told him that. In fact, I waited with baited breath all weekend to see if he would mention anything about coming home. If he didn't suggest it, I wasn't going to say anything.

On the Sunday – this was at the end of March – after we had gone to a museum and were at dinner to celebrate his achievement yet again (the whole weekend had been one big celebratory fuck), he looked at me during the meal and asked: “Are we going to talk about it?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Talk about what?”

“My show. My _third_ solo show.”

“What about it?” I folded my lips into my mouth, which usually meant I was holding back a smile, but sometimes it just meant that I was worried what was coming next. I prepared myself for impending disappointment, well, tried to anyway. For once, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep my face emotionless, if he had changed his mind about coming home.

“Brian, don’t play dumb with me. It doesn’t suit you.” His eyes stayed on me the whole time and, being stuck at the table, I couldn't escape. I wanted to get up and leave and go... anywhere but here. I wanted to stand up and look out of the window, like I could have done if we had been in his place. It would be good to have my back to him when he pronounced his decision. But the little shit knew that and that was exactly the reason we were having this conversation over plates of filet mignon instead of on his couch or in his bed. No escape here, at least none that was subtle and could be passed off as something else. He never let me off easily. Knowing that this was probably the reason we were still together didn't make it any easier to bear.

“Just say it,” I finally said as nonchalantly as I could and I thought it came out pretty evenly.

“I’m coming home. I’ll be home by Thanksgiving.” Not ‘can I come home’ or even ‘I wanna come home’, just a decision of what he wanted to do, would do. No doubt, no question, no asking my opinion, just as it should be, and so just like Justin. And then there was a hint of hesitation that gave away his anxiety.

I _so_ wanted to toy with him, pretend to have to think about it or make a smartass remark, but nothing came to mind. Instead I sported what I knew must be the biggest smile he had ever seen. And a hard-on, but those he had already seen as big as they come.

 

It took me a few weeks until I realized that, other than deciding that Justin would be coming home, we never really talked about it. Looking back on it, I would have expected him to go on and on about it, to make plans and want to discuss them with me in minute detail, to bounce with excitement. To be fair, he was very busy. The gallery wanted eighteen pieces, large ones if possible, and he had only four that he was happy to show. The rest he still had to produce and, with taking up to two weeks per canvas, he had his work cut out for him. Now it was July and he had told me he had ten and two he did not like much, which I knew meant he would destroy them in the end. He was cutting it close and he knew it and I didn't blame him for being in the studio every day until late. His biggest worry was losing inspiration, leaving him unable to paint when he was under a time constraint. So painting every waking hour was a good thing. But it left little time for anything else. We met almost every weekend, but we never talked about what would happen when he got home, not really. Nothing apart from unimportant things like ‘I look forward to being at the Deb’s dinner every Sunday.’

Of course, that suited me just fine. I wasn't good with change, never had been. Professionally, I could adapt to and implement changes so fast other people’s heads were left spinning. I always said I liked to be ahead of the wave, not riding it. But where my emotions were concerned, I didn’t exactly embrace change. I reacted badly every time with Justin, when he came into my life and every time he left. So I couldn’t say that I wasn’t... concerned about his imminent return. There were too many unanswered questions, too many possibilities, too many things that could get fucked up. It was illusionary to think that we could just carry on where we had left off five years ago. Neither one of us was the same any longer.

 

In May, there was the first indication that he was actually making plans for when he was going to be back. He mentioned, almost in passing, that he would ask his mother to find him a studio in Pittsburgh. He wanted to look at some possibilities the next time he would be home.

“So we're gonna live at the loft?” I asked, concentrating on drawing pointless circles on his naked back with my finger, while my head was resting on his beautiful and equally naked ass. “Because if you wanted to live at the house, we could get a studio ready for you there before you come home.”

“Do _you_ wanna live at the house?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.” It was an outright lie and he probably knew it. I had thought of nothing but what we would do when he came home. Where to live was the least of my worries, though.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed. “It’s still months away. No need to make any decisions now.”

 _'Right. Let’s just not talk about it. Suits me.'_ So we fucked instead, a long, drawn-out, slow fuck, with lots of teasing and designed to make anybody forget whatever they were thinking about.

 

It wasn’t just that I wasn’t paying attention, I was actively trying not to notice anything. If I noticed things, I would have to say something and if I said something, we would have to talk. And God only knew what would come of that. I had been okay with waiting for him to come home. In fact, I had been pretty convinced that he would never come home. That we would do this flying in for visits thing until we were old and grey or until he would decide that it wasn’t enough or too hard or that someone else would be better for him. I was a realist and that was realistic. Everything else was just a pipedream.

So I had never really thought about what would happen if he actually did come home – other than fuck him at every opportunity, of course. Having him next to me every night was pretty easy to imagine and hope for and dream about when I was lying in bed, alone and horny. But the ins and outs of our daily life? Not a clue. Not even an idea of what _I_ wanted, never mind what _he_ might want. And the possibility that our ideas might not mesh? I definitely did not want to go there, even in my head.

So I missed it somehow, the fact that he had changed, that somehow he wasn’t the Justin I thought I knew any longer, not even the new and improved New York version. Over the last five years I had seen him become more confident. He had always been pretty ballsy, but with me there had always been that last bit of uncertainty, that little bit of fear that I might hurt him, accidentally or sometimes pretty much on purpose. He was so used to me being a total shit when I was in one of my moods.

But all of that was gone. He knew his art was great. Being successful in the art world and making money was just a by-product. If he'd never sold a single painting, he would still have known that he was a genius. He didn’t need validation. People loved him. For all his professing that he could not stand people, he was a very popular guy. He was hot and could pull just about any guy he wanted. He was well-liked and had a bunch of friends, who were quite loyal to him. He would always be the baby of our make-shift family and be showered with affection. His mother adored him and his sister relished the fact that she had a semi-famous brother she could brag about. One who lived in New York, no less.

And somewhere along the line, he must have worked out that he had me wrapped around his little finger and that I would give him the world if it was in my power and he asked for it. I might be bitching about it all the way, but I would do it. So he no longer begged and pleaded; he demanded that I did my share for our relationship. And it wasn’t only the flying he wanted me to do. It was talking and being honest and being open. The only thing he never asked for, was mushy, emotional stuff. I wasn’t really sure if he was doing it to spare me or if he no longer needed it, but we seemed to get by well enough without it.

It wasn’t that I was suddenly good at relationships or even just adequate, it was that I had learned to trust him in this matter. If Justin said to me ‘you need to tell me what you think about this’ – always ‘think’, never ‘feel’ – then I knew I had to man up and cut the bullshit. It worked because he never abused that trust and I never failed to follow his lead, however much bitching I did at the time. The point was, that it was Justin who looked after our comfort, mine and his own. Because he could and I would fuck it up. And in the long run, however uncomfortable his demands made me in the short-term, in the end, it always worked out for both of us.

 

So I dropped the ball. By the time I realized that Justin had changed, I had no way of telling what had caused it. Maybe if we had lived together, I would have noticed it sooner or I would have been close enough to see the cause of it. Or noticing sooner might have allowed me to work out when it began and whether it was something I had done.

I couldn’t talk to him about it, because I couldn’t tell what it was that was bothering me. He was quieter but not really, withdrawn at times but not really, unhappy but not really. Asking him why he was being weird wouldn't go down well, especially if I could not explain it properly, or at all. So I bided my time, hoping that I was imagining it and that at the next visit everything would be back to normal. And at the back of my mind was that nagging feeling that we had been here before, but I stomped on it until it stopped nagging and just sat there, mocking me.

In June I thought I had it pegged. We hadn’t seen each other for two weeks because the weekend before I had been in Toronto to see Gus. We fucked when I arrived and fucked again and then again and he was so focused and intense that it almost made me uncomfortable. The next day we were sitting naked on his couch, eating lunch and watching some weird-ass comedy program when all of a sudden he came out with: “Did you fuck anyone on the plane?”

I looked at him, a little confused about his sudden desire for me to share, but he was looking studiously at the TV. “Uhm, the flight really isn’t long enough for that. And the flight attendant was female.”

There was a pause and I had just gone back to looking at the screen, thinking I would let it pass, when he asked: “What about last week, when you were in Toronto?”

“I was with Gus practically the whole time.”

Watching him, wondering what was going on, I could see him take a breath for his next question.

“Stop,” I said and he finally looked at me. “Justin, I can give you a run-down of every single guy I fucked for the last... however long I can remember back, including locations, positions and probably cock sizes, if you want. But I would really like to know what’s with this strange jealous wife routine.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not.”

“I said okay.”

“But you didn’t mean it.”

It had been a long time since we had one of these conversations, at least when we were serious about it, which, judging from his expression, apparently we were. “Justin,” I tried again, calmly and without a hint of amusement. “I don’t mind answering your questions, but why are you asking?”

“I’ve been thinking.” I refrained from making the obvious, running-joke reply and waited for him to carry on. “I got so used to having you all to myself. I know you still trick, but I never see it or hear about it, so it’s almost like it’s not happening. And when we’re together, you just fuck me and... I’ve been wondering how I will feel about it when I get home and I'm aware of it again...”

“So, you were asking to find out how it makes you feel when I talk about it?”

He shrugged. “Kinda.”

“So I won’t talk about it or do it where you'd notice. I’ll be... discreet.”

He nodded and I did not like it. It was a nod like he used to give me when he was a teenager, eager to please me and worried about annoying me. I hadn't seen it in years, nor had I liked it much then, either. I took the remote and switched the TV off.

“Hey, I was watching that.”

“No, you weren’t. Now talk to me.”

He stubbornly kept on staring at the blank screen, so I pulled on his arm until he came to sit between my legs, his bare back and ass against my naked chest and crotch. We had our best conversations when we didn't have to look at each other, yet could feel the other’s body for reassurance and to gauge reactions. Okay, so _I_ was most comfortable talking that way, but for once he seemed happy with it, too. “Talk,” I said gently.

“Pittsburgh's really small.”

“Not really, but let’s just say it is...”

“Okay, the gay community in Pittsburgh is really small. And there's always talk. It would be impossible not to come across your tricks. People talk and guys always like to brag about getting fucked by Brian Kinney. I can’t see how it can _not_ get back to me. And I’m not sure if I can live like that again. To be discreet you would have sneak about. Or I would have to stay away from the whole community or you would have do it away from the usual places or...”

He was babbling, which was never a good sign. I put my fingers against his mouth to silence him and after a few moments and a sigh, he kissed them. I finally had a clue where this was going and maybe even what had been bothering him for so long. And I felt relieved because it made sense to me that this would weigh heavily on his mind and yet would be difficult for him to talk to me about. But it wasn't something that I would allow to trip us up.

“It would be easier if I simply didn’t trick, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure,” he nodded, but he was just agreeing to the words, not the sentiment. It didn’t even occur to him that I might be doing more than stating a simple fact.

“When was the last time you tricked?” I asked him.

“Last weekend.”

Wow, times really had changed when his last trick was more recent than mine. “So, you still trick pretty regularly?”

“Not when I see you every weekend. I hardly go out during the week and at the weekends you’re here. But when you’re with Gus and I’m out clubbing...”

However much I had always insisted that Justin was too young to be with just one guy and that he should have as many experiences as possible, I had always known that his reasons for tricking were different from mine. He used to trick because he thought I expected it of him, which I did. Or because he was away from me and it was no more than jerking himself off, just with other people as aids. He didn't need it and when I was around he didn't really want it either. Some people were like that. Ben and Mikey. Ted and Blake. The munchers. Okay, maybe not the munchers. But certainly all of Mikey’s weird new friends from the suburbs. And while I certainly wouldn't lump Justin in with any of these guys, he didn't really fit in with sluts like me either. So maybe it was time to admit that to myself.

“So you wouldn’t miss tricking if you couldn’t do it anymore?”

He shrugged again, not having cottoned on to where this was going yet. Surprising, since I was sure that it was where he was heading in the first place, when he started this conversation.

“Not really, not when I come home and have you around all the time.”

I nodded a few times, which he could feel against the side of his head. Then I smirked, looking forward to his reaction to my next statement. It was so difficult to surprise Justin nowadays. Sure, I could buy him something he wanted and it would be a surprise and he would be excited and happy. But a genuine surprise? One that left him completely stunned by its unexpectedness? By something I did? That was almost impossible because he knew me far too well by now. Which made it all the sweeter when I did manage to pull it off.

I moved my lips to his ear and made my voice very low and husky. “And we could fuck raw as well.”

It took a few seconds, then he went totally still, before he started breathing faster in an effort not to turn round – because that was the rule for these conversations: don’t look at poor Brian because he might freak out on you if he can’t hide.

Eventually, I took pity on him and stretched my neck as if I was trying to peer into his face. He tried to look at me without making it obvious that it was what he was doing. Then, when he was sure that I was looking at him, he sat up and turned around. “Are you serious?”

I pushed my tongue into my cheek and smirked. 

“Brian, are you absolutely sure?”

I nodded, trying to appear calm, cool and collected. He didn't need to know that my tricking had gone down over the last few months anyway, so much so that it wasn’t such a leap anymore from what I did now to giving it up altogether. The reasons for my tricking had gradually lost their importance. I no longer had anything to prove, not to others and not to myself. The amount of men I had fucked in my lifetime was testament to my ability to pull whoever I fancied. I got my validation from my friends and family and from Kinnetik nowadays. Tricks were just a relief of tension. And with Justin home, I would be able to get relief and validation at the same time. It really was a no-brainer.

In fact, Justin really never had anything to worry about in the first place. I probably wouldn’t have tricked after he came home anyway and the only reason I hadn’t mentioned it was because I thought, at 27, _he_ might not be ready yet. I had prepared myself to have to wait until he was the age I was now, because it certainly was a recent development for me. But Justin had always been more mature than me. I wasn’t prepared to let him know just yet that he’d been trying to ram through an open door. Let him think that I was making a concession to him. Who knew when I would want to cash in on him thinking I was just doing it to please him? Though I was probably deluding myself. It wouldn’t take him long to realize that it was me, not him, who had made the suggestion. As for making it a conscious decision, a rule you might say, between us – if it led to fucking raw, all I could say was: hell yes!

But for now, I had a squirming Justin in my arms, who was kissing me all over and promising me astounding blowjobs and all sorts of other sexual favors when he was home. I'd never feared a lack of variety, even if I would be fucking only him. He'd always been adventurous and open to new ideas and never held back. However, I decided that I would like to cash in on some of those favors straight away. Luckily enough, we were already naked.

 

So I thought I'd cracked it. I decided that this was what had made Justin so weird recently and that now everything was back to normal, that Justin was back to normal and it certainly seemed like it that weekend. He was talking non-stop and had all sorts of plans for Pittsburgh, which all of a sudden he felt able to share with me. I realized, after the fact, that this had been a make or break issue for him and that we had probably narrowly skirted disaster. Justin was no longer an impressionable, insecure teenager. He must have known that he wouldn't be able to put up with my tricking any longer, no matter how hard he tried, and that it would have broken us up eventually.

I had to admit that I felt rather smug for a while. By sheer coincidence and good luck, I had come out of this a shining hero for once and still got what I had wanted in the first place. Also, I realized that if we could get past the tricking issue, there weren’t really that many things that had the capacity to harm our relationship and I relaxed a little about the big fuck-up I was anticipating for when he returned. I had no real reason to be worried, other than the fact that the things I really wanted in life tended to be either withheld from me or, even worse, taken away after I had them for a while. Not talking doom and gloom here, just speaking from experience.

The following weekend Justin came to Pittsburgh and we went out to the house on Sunday for him to choose a room for his studio and to take some measurements. We decided that I would furnish the master bedroom and the den and my office and the rest would be left to him. I realized pretty quickly that my taste in clean lines of chrome and leather would look out of place with the wood panels and the other original features of the house. It made sense to let Justin have a go instead. He had good taste and more ideas than there were rooms in the house and that was saying something. My only regret was that it wouldn't be finished in time for Gus’s visit this summer.

 

But soon enough I felt uneasy again. Justin had slipped back into that weirdness that had no name. It resulted in strange, out of the blue conversations like the one that had led to the decision to stop tricking or this one at the end of June: Sunday morning, I was feeling tired and fucked out and could just about hold up my coffee for me to drink, while perusing the New York Times, when he said, “Have you started that no tricking thing yet?”

 _‘No tricking thing’_? I might have been amenable to it, but I would still have preferred it, if he treated my noble sacrifice with a bit more appreciation. After all, tricking had been such a huge and important part of my life for so long. And I really didn't want to know why he was asking either, but it would probably not be a good idea to ignore it. Although, looking at him, I realized that he had never even lifted his eyes off his section of the paper. “Why? Have you fallen off the wagon already?”

“Not yet,” he said, still not looking up. “You?”

“Haven’t tricked since we made the decision. Why?”

“Is that part of the deal? Are we monogamous now? Or are we waiting until I get home?”

I would have been so much more comfortable with this discussion, if he would have looked at me – hiding was my forte, not his – but he didn’t. “Don’t mind either way,” I said, turning to the paper to beat him at his own game. “I’m game, if you are.”

“Okay,” was all he said.

 _Okay_? Okay, what? Okay, we're no longer tricking as from now? Okay, I heard you? Okay, I will think about it? What? But somehow I couldn't bring myself to ask. I had stuck my neck out far enough already. I didn’t want to hear that he wanted to carry on tricking while he was still in New York. Sometimes I missed the old Justin, who was always so keen to please me, so keen to explain all his feelings to me, so keen to know my innermost thoughts. As annoying as that had been, it also never made me feel like I was skating on thin ice or wondering what had just happened. With the old Justin I always knew. By and large, I liked the new confident Justin better, but given the choice between weird-Justin and the old one, I would pick the old one. And that was when I realized that weird-Justin was back or maybe he had never really gone away – I could no longer tell. But I would live to regret my decision not to bite the bullet on this one.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**PART TWO**

After a five-hour flight, some hold-up with the baggage at the airport and an interminable taxi ride, I was finally knocking on Justin’s door. There had been one or two surprise visits on both sides in the beginning, but after we had the same idea one weekend and ended up in opposite cities, we gave up on that and stuck to planning. However, with Justin still thinking I was going to see Gus this weekend, the worst that could happen was that he’d be out. In that case, I could always go to his studio to pick him up, or, if he wasn’t there, phone him or even just wait for him to get home. In the taxi, it had suddenly occurred to me, that he might be trying to surprise us in Toronto, but that possibility was remote. Lindsay really did not do well with disruptions at the moment and he would respect that.

Still, as I draped myself against the door jamb, much the same way as I had done the very first time I had come to New York for him – it was a running-joke kind of thing between us – I was glad to hear noises from behind the door. There was one thing to be said about surprise visits: it gave you a fair idea of how welcome you really were. His face registered shock at first and then something which I could only describe as profound relief. Then he smiled widely and just said: “Brian.”

I grinned at him and then, looking past him, I could spot Caspar – who else? – on his couch, sporting a look of abject disappointment. Now, it would have been childish of me to gloat over the fact that I had just annihilated the kid’s weekend plans. Ah, who was I kidding? I was positively gleeful, but to show it would have spoiled the effect, so I looked back at Justin and said: “Surprise.”

He pulled me into his apartment and never let go of my hand or looked away from my eyes, while he said: “I’ll see you later, Cas.”

Caspar got up reluctantly, dragging his feet, and found his shoes and jacket in slow motion. I decided to hurry him along by kissing Justin deeply and then I forgot why I was doing it and just carried on. I felt his friend brush past us behind my back on his way to the door.

“Are we still on for tomorrow, Jus?” he asked from the doorway. Really not the sharpest tool in the box.

Justin didn’t even look at him, but he pulled back a bit and said, “Not fucking likely,” while still smiling at me. As horny as I was, it struck me as a little unkind and uncharacteristic for Justin, but he was already starting to unbutton my shirt and what did I care if he’d had a tiff with the kid?

“I’ll call you tomorrow, then.”

I pulled myself away from Justin’s face one last time and, giving Caspar a death glare, I said coldly: “Make that Monday.”

He looked like he was going to have something to say about that, but then he just turned around and sashayed away down the stairs, wiggling his ass. Somehow he seemed hotter than I remembered him, but his guiles were wasted on me – really not interested – and Justin wasn't looking at anything but me. It was all very satisfying. And then Justin’s tongue was in my mouth and his hand was down my pants and we spent the next few hours doing other very satisfying things until we passed out in the early hours of the morning.

 

Justin still lived in the same apartment he had moved into when he first moved to New York. Then, one of Daphne’s friends had held the lease and Justin had camped out on the couch, as there was only one bedroom. Those were the good old days, when visits had meant swanky hotel rooms, because we couldn’t really expect a breeder girl to put up with two sex-crazed queers nearly every weekend, especially when it was her apartment. After she had moved out, Justin took over the lease and insisted we’d stay here during my visits. It was a cheap place and not really up to my standards, but he loved having his own domain and was so proud that I indulged him. And then I got used to it and it wasn’t so bad really. 

There was a bathroom with a shower and the heating worked well, so it was always nicely warm in the winter. In the summer, it suffered from a lack of air conditioning, or rather I did. Justin didn't seem to  mind. When his career had started to take off, he had opted for staying here, despite my preference for a safer area, and had instead spent his newly earned money on a better studio, the very same he was still using to this day.

Showers in his place were fun in an adventurous sort of way. We were squeezed into the small stall, which lent itself to fucking in the sense that we were plastered against each other by sheer lack of space. Sometimes we simply gave up and conceded that the shower was really just meant for one person, but this was one of those weekends when we didn't seem to be able to get enough fucking in, no matter how hard we tried. Maybe it was the fact that neither of us had expected to be together. And an orgasm was an orgasm, regardless of how uncomfortable the circumstances were under which it was achieved.

Afterwards, we sat on his couch, at opposite ends, with the soles of our naked feet against each other, drinking coffee, wearing nothing but sweatpants. When I started keeping some clothes here, Justin had pointed out to me that I now had ‘a drawer for my drawers’ at his place, looking incredibly smug when he spouted my own words back to me, and every time I took anything out of the damn cupboard that fucking phrase repeated in my head.

“So Lindsay’s gone off to a cottage somewhere?”  he asked.

“Lake Ontario, with some friend of hers.”

“Which one?”

“Huh?”

“Which friend?”

 I had to cast about for the name. “Uhm, Katrina?”

“Ah, the one with the twins. They're very tight. Do you think they’re fucking?” And trust Justin to actually know Lindsay’s friends.

“God, I hope so. Might get Lindsay out of her funk. And how the fuck do you know Katrina anyway?”

“She was at that barbeque last summer, remember? The one with the bleached hair and the two girls who were fighting all afternoon.”

I had a vague memory of a house full of lesbians and Linz and Mel desperately trying to hide the fact that they'd had a blazing argument just before the guests turned up. Even if Justin and I hadn’t been within hearing distance of said argument, I still would have been able to tell as soon as I saw them and I didn’t think they had fooled any of their friends either.

“Hang on. The twins are girls? How much fun is that gonna be for Gus?”

“He’s nine, Brian. With a bit of luck he doesn’t care yet. And with their mother being a lesbian, they’re probably tomboys anyway.”

“I wanted to go anyway and stay with Gus, but she wouldn’t let me. I think it’s because he'd have to stay with Mel for Thursday night. I’m really tired of all their shit.”

“Yeah, me too. Do you think she took JR?”

“Didn’t sound like it. Jenny's too little. She’d just get in the way.”

He just shook his head. Justin had lost patience with Lindsay a long time ago, round about the time she pulled her famous disappearing act three years ago. Whereas I tried to keep out of their relationship and to support Lindsay when she was down, even if it was her own damn fault, he was stubbornly holding a grudge on Gus’s behalf. He felt she needed to be told in no uncertain terms that her behavior was unacceptable and hurtful to Gus. I, on the other hand, had known her a lot longer and I knew that she would just crumble, if I were to put pressure on her and then, what good would she be to Gus? Melanie tried to steer a line somewhere between our two viewpoints, with a tough-as-nails attitude where the kids were concerned and a softly-softly approach to Lindsay in every other respect. I had come to appreciate Melanie for always doing what had to be done, for being there for both kids and never complaining. Well, at least not to me. But then, she wouldn’t.

“So are you going up the weekend after next?”

“Yeah, you wanna come?”

“I can’t really afford it, time-wise. And Lindsay's always happy not to see me anyway.”

“And you're _so_ looking forward to seeing _her_?”

He just snorted and pushed against my foot playfully. I drank my coffee and just looked at him, smiling. Then I remembered something. “Has the ghost been working out lately? Because he doesn’t look as scrawny as he used to.”

I saw the flicker of... something pass over his features. I would have missed it, if I hadn’t been watching him. It was gone too quickly to identify it, anxiety perhaps, or maybe anger? Not regret, I decided, not a guilty conscience; it couldn’t be. That was just silly and I wasn’t that insecure anymore. I _wasn’t_. Taking a deep breath, to calm an unwanted and unwarranted feeling of anxiety, I watched him do the same.

“Cas has a personal trainer now. Had him for a few weeks now.”

I laughed. “Don’t you just hate rich kids.”

“Ah well, got your attention, didn’t it?”

“Are you jealous? Because that guy’s so far down my list of guys I’d consider fucking that he dropped off the bottom five minutes after I met him.”

“Yeah, well, he's not too keen on you either.” He seemed to rally himself and smirked. “So he had a five minute window of opportunity with the great Brian Kinney and missed it? Bummer.”

“Trouble in paradise?” I smirked back. “You’re not usually this uncharitable towards him. In fact, he seemed to have advanced to BFF pretty quickly.”

“That is so juvenile it’s insulting,” he said and he actually sounded a little insulted, or annoyed maybe. There was definitely something going on with him and Caspar that was bothering him. “So has anybody else made your list of people you’d consider fucking recently?” Ah, a change of subject, the ghost must have really pissed him off, and I wasn’t _really_ feeling incredibly smug about that. Not even a little. Well, maybe a little.

My good mood translated into one of those rare occasions when I say something rather sickly, which could be construed as romantic. “Just you.”

Justin actually blushed and smiled quietly for a few moments, not really looking at me. Just basking in gooey feelings, no doubt. Then he decided that I would be uncomfortable with all this sweetness and started his usual ‘let’s not draw attention to what Brian said, lest he should feel the need to thwart it with a cutting put-down’ counter attack. He was not wrong either. My skin had started to crawl with unease.

“So you haven’t fucked anyone?”

Wow, now it was my turn to feel insulted. I could feel my vague concern about him in general and Caspar in particular tip over into anger. “We have a deal,” I reminded him curtly and got up to get a refill. His kitchen was tiny, no room to sit or even for two people to work without bumping into each other constantly, but it had the advantage of walls and a door, although the door was propped against the wall permanently. I refilled my coffee and washed the pot, which was not quite empty but enough to be able to pretend it had been. Then I added sugar to my drink and took my time stirring it.

Justin came into the room while I was still doing that and wrapped his arms around my chest from behind, plastering his naked skin against my bare back. After a few moments of silence, he said: “I wouldn't blame you, you know? It’s hard to try this no tricking thing when we are in different cities. It wouldn’t mean the end, you know? We could postpone it until I get home.”

I was torn between the feeling of pleasant anticipation that I always had when he spoke about coming home with such easy conviction and hot anger that he assumed I couldn’t control myself. And then there was that other feeling in the background: disappointment at the idea that it was him who wasn’t ready. The anger won. “If you wanna call it off, just have the balls to say so.”

“What? No, Brian. I just thought that it would be easier for you to try this when we’re together.”

Wrong thing to say. I pried his hands loose and turned around to look at him. “The only person who has a problem with it is you, Justin.” I tried to brush past him, but this was where the smallness of the space worked in his favor. All he had to do was not move, which meant that neither could I. He knew full well that I would never shove him out of the way. Done that once, never again.

“No,” he said. “I want this. I want you. Only you.” And he pulled me down and kissed me, forcing his tongue into my mouth and pushing against me, rubbing his hard-on against my thigh. Well, angry fucks always worked for me. I turned him around, pushing him over the worktop while my hand fumbled in the silverware drawer for the condoms he kept there. When I had sheathed my hard cock, he had already pulled down his pants and was using his feet to work one of his legs out of them and then he spread himself for me and grunted when I pushed into him hard. All my anger drained away as I was pounding into him and when he finally came all over his kitchen cabinet doors and I collapsed on his back in a satiated mess, all I could remember was him saying, ‘Only you’.

The rest of the weekend we spent in a sexual haze. I felt out of sorts and so did he, apparently, and whenever that happened, my first instinct was always fucking. We were good at that, always had been. We would never have got past the first fuck if it hadn’t been so phenomenal. Back then, it had been his innocence combined with his insatiable appetite and his eagerness to experiment, that had made him irresistible. By the time I realized that the innocence was well and truly gone, it had been replaced by interest and concern and real emotions. Nowadays, I still felt protective sometimes, but there was no longer any wish or need to guide and mentor him. He was his own guide, he had been even when he'd seemed to follow me in the beginning. Hell, there were enough times when he was guiding _me._ But whenever we were out of alignment, fucking was our fall-back position, because in that we were always united and unambiguous.

I went home after that weekend feeling tired and fucked out, but also quite drained. Justin and I had been together for almost ten years and I couldn’t help but wonder if I would ever figure out how this emotional stuff really worked. It certainly didn't seem to get any easier.

 

The next week he phoned me on Thursday and said that he would need the weekend to work on his paintings if he was to have any hope of finishing enough canvases in time for the show. I knew it wasn’t a lie, even though it sounded like one. He told me he had finished another painting that week, so he still had seven to go and they had to be done by the end of October to give the gallery time to hang them and light them and whatever else they did to them.

“Does that mean that you’ll be coming to Toronto with me next week?” I asked him.

_“Uhm, no... I need to paint, Brian. I’m sorry.”_

“You realize that we won’t see each other for three weeks then, don’t you?” That hadn’t happened for so long I couldn’t even remember the last time.

_“Yes, I know. I need to do this, Brian. I wouldn’t enjoy Toronto. I would only think about how much time in the studio I’m missing while I’m there. I’m getting really antsy about this.”_

I decided to be a grown-up about it. I wasn’t some silly faggot who couldn’t live without the ‘boyfriend’ for three weeks. Trying to throw in some support, I said: “Well, this last painting only took you a week. So I’m sure you’re gonna make it.”

_“God, I hope so. So, how are you gonna occupy yourself this weekend?”_

“Don’t know yet. I’ll find something to do.”

_“You should go out. Meet the guys. Live a little.”_

I laughed. “You’re making me sound like a shy and retiring wallflower.”

 _“Yes, that’s you exactly, couldn’t have put it better myself.”_ Now he was laughing, too. Then there was a short silence. _“If you do go out... I wouldn’t hold it against you if you wanted to trick. I mean, three weeks is a long time. We didn’t really plan on that, when we decided on this thing. So I won’t mind if you do."_

“...”

_“Brian?”_

“There's someone at the door. I’ll call you back when I got rid of them.” I flipped my phone shut and stared at the ceiling. What the hell was going on? Well, I didn’t really need to ask that. It was glaringly obvious. Justin didn't actually want to be monogamous, which was strange because over the years he had been the one pushing for it. It had been a non-issue over long periods of time and then, every so often, his desire for it would shine through. It was always there, from day one and it never really went away. He had just learned to live with it better and maybe even enjoyed the benefits. Well, it looked like I had finally managed to shape him into my own image. He could no longer live without fucking random guys.

I understood. He was twenty-seven and fucking hot and it would be a waste to settle for just one guy, even if that guy was as hot as me. That was the reason I would never have brought it up myself. But _he_ had come to _me._ Never mind that I had been the one to say the words, he was the one who brought it up in the first place. Now he’d changed his mind. He was entitled to that. And he was right, it was stupid to attempt this while we were in different cities.

But I had my pride, too. That had to be what I was feeling: anger that he tried to put this on me, that he maybe actually thought I couldn’t do it, that he wasn’t man enough to say that _he_ couldn’t refrain for three weeks. I wouldn’t hold it against him, if only he were honest with me. What I would not let him do was push me into a corner and make this all about me. If he wanted to carry on tricking until he came home or even beyond that, then he would have to damned well come out and say it. And the anger I was feeling had nothing to do with possessiveness or jealousy or such lesbian crap. It was righteous indignation and I was fucking entitled to it.

I flipped open the phone and speed-dialed him.

 _“Hey,”_ he said after the first ring.

“Hey yourself.”

_“Who was at the door?”_

“No one. So, what are you wearing?”

He laughed and I heard a rustling noise. _“Give me five seconds and the answer will be nothing.”_

“You’ve got five seconds on the clock, Mr. Taylor.”

 

And that was that. At the weekend, I went out to Woody’s and ran into Emmett, who regaled me in his inimitable style with his adventures at breeder weddings he had been organizing. Emmett was always a good laugh, especially since he had stopped seeing me as the devil incarnate – or possibly since I had stopped insulting him at every turn. I had a lot of respect for the guy, even in the days when I would never have admitted that. Since my image was no longer paramount in all my considerations, I could actually enjoy his company without worrying what it would do to my reputation to be seen spending an evening with a queen.

“My, do you see that delectable morsel at the bar?”

I followed his gaze to see a buff twenty-something guy look in our direction and nodding slightly towards the bathroom when I met his eyes.

Emmett sighed. “Alas, it wasn’t me he was after. I should know better than to hang out with you. So I suppose this is the end of our delightful evening?”

“Well, it is for me here. I need to check on Babylon. Why don’t you come with? We can dance for a bit before I go up to the office.”

“You’re not taking him up on his offer?”

I looked at the guy, then back at Emmett. “Nah, he’s got a squint. He was really looking at you.”

Emmett creased his brows in confusion, but got up readily enough when I did. At Babylon, we danced a few dances and then I went up to the office to speak to Marc about the business and to look at the books, although that was mainly Theodore’s job. I only did it because I happened to be here.

On Sunday, I went to the gym and in the afternoon I made my way over to Deb’s for dinner. It still gave me a weird feeling every time I entered the house and saw the football on the TV, with Carl engrossed in front of it. There had never been any sports on in Debbie’s house before. Neither Vic nor Michael had ever shown an interest, but for me it brought back memories of Sunday afternoons in my house, with games always serving as an excuse to get drunk - as if an excuse had ever been needed. Carl was a nice enough guy and as the house slowly filled with guests, he always had the courtesy to switch it off and join the conversation.

My week was as incredibly busy as they all were nowadays. Since I had started taking every single weekend off to spend either with Justin or with Gus, my weekdays were crammed full with work and twelve-hour days were the rule rather than the exception. What I did notice was that I felt more rested than usual. Maybe the quiet weekend had done me some good. Of course, the effect had worn off by Friday when I was desperately trying to finish off all the last-minute stuff so that I could catch my flight at half past five, which I made with just minutes to spare.

 

Gus was his usual enthusiastic self and talked non-stop until an hour past his bedtime. I blew Lindsay off for now, saying that I was tired, which was the God’s honest truth anyway, and had an early night. If it got me out of discussing the drama that was her life at the same time, then so much the better. In the years I had been coming here, I'd learned my lesson well, and early nights were a necessity because, predictably, Gus woke me up at the ass crack of dawn. We made some breakfast while Lindsay was still asleep. Well, we poured some cereal into bowls anyway and I made coffee. I asked him how his weekend had gone.

“All right.”

“Did you like the cottage?”

“It was all right. I swam in the lake. It was really cold.”

“Did you like the other kids?”

“They were all right.”

“Gus, if you didn’t like it, you can tell me. I won’t tell your mother. I just want to know if you liked it.”

He shrugged. “Tara and Amber are a bit of a pain. They giggle all the time and the rest of the time they fight.”

“And their mother?”

“Mom likes her.”

“And do you like her?”

“She’s all right. Didn’t see much of her and mom. I just hope she doesn’t move in. Don’t tell mom.”

“I said I won’t. Do you think Katrina might wanna move in?”

“I hope not. Where would they all sleep?”

I had to laugh at the fact that kids were mainly concerned with practical matters. Where would they sleep indeed? Lindsay had moved into a two-bedroom apartment when she and Melanie had split up. Melanie had stayed in the house, because she was really the only one who could take over the mortgage. Lindsay simply didn't earn enough as an art teacher. I would have helped her out under normal circumstances, but I had my reasons not to.

Lindsay had never been the most practical person and as I suspected that they would end up together again eventually anyway, Melanie was the best person to keep things together in the meantime. And there was also the fact that Mel had earned my respect and even gratitude when Lindsay had taken off with a visiting art professor three years ago. Mel had been three weeks away from her final exam to qualify for practicing law in Canada and had been left with the two children and no idea where Lindsay had gone. But she had pushed herself through the exam and starting a new job as a lawyer, while caring for Jenny and Gus at the same time. She stoically and silently plodded through her work and her home life, until Lindsay returned three months later, disillusioned with the good professor and full of apologies and pledges to do better from now on. Melanie, from what I could see, took her back without question.

Well, Melanie might have forgiven her, but Justin was still upset that she had left Gus behind with just the barest of goodbyes. Michael and Debbie were incandescent on Jenny’s behalf. I just felt disappointed with Lindsay, because I would never have thought, when I agreed to help her conceive, that she would ever let the child down. I forgave her because I knew that Lindsay wasn't a strong person and if that was all she was ever going to do wrong, then we could all count ourselves lucky. But every time I watched Gus try so hard to please his mother, because he was still afraid that she would leave him again, I felt a helplessness that was hard to bear.

After breakfast, Gus and I went to pick up Jenny. This was our routine since Serena had come on the scene. When I was around, I acted as a buffer between Mel and Linz. Today I was very glad of that fact, because when we got to the munchers’ house, a strange woman answered the door. To me she looked like a shorter version of Lindsay and she had the same polite manner about her. She got points for greeting Gus first, who stomped into the house after a short, ‘Hi’.

“Hello,” she said to me. “You must be Brian. I’m Serena. Come in. JR is nearly ready. Mel’s in the shower.”

I followed her into the living room, where Jenny was already in mid-conversation with Gus and, God, could that girl talk! She saw me and gave me a, “Hi, Uncle Brian,” and a big smile. She was the most beautiful child imaginable, with almost black hair and big brown eyes that got her whatever she wanted.

“Hey, kiddo, are you ready to go and spend time with your mom?”

“I have to get my bag,” she said and ran up the stairs, almost running into Mel, who was coming down in sweatpants and a T-shirt, running her hands through hair that was still wet.

“Hey, Brian, how are you?”

“I’m good. You?”

“Fine.”

Mel would never be a friend of mine, but we had come to appreciate each other for the lengths each of us was willing to go to for the well-being of the kids. She completely forgot that I was even in the room when her eyes fell on Gus, who had got up off the floor to greet her. Mel was a different type of parent from both Lindsay and me. Lindsay was gushing and emotional. I would have liked to think that I was more of a cool parent, who did stuff the mothers wouldn’t quite approve of. Melanie was the anchor. After Jenny had got over her screaming baby phase, I had never seen her anything other than calm with either of the children. She disciplined when necessary, something neither Lindsay nor I seemed to be able to bring ourselves to do. And she provided what was required: support, security, stability, love. Not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that she would be the better parent, the glue that held everything together and the safe haven the kids so desperately needed. 

Watching her talk to Gus with undivided attention, smiling, and just barely touching, with her hand gently playing with strands of his hair, I was glad I had given her my parental rights. Lindsay would never push me out of Gus’s life, but she would Mel, and had tried to do so in the past. There was no doubt in my mind which one of the two of us he needed more. Just looking at him talking to his mama, I could see that he was calmer and more content than he was anywhere else just now. Gus needed to go home and home was here with Mel. Only it wasn’t possible without Lindsay, because no matter what, he loved her the most.

I loitered in the hallway, talking to Jenny who was ready to go and giving Mel and Gus some space. Serena collected more Brownie points from me for having disappeared into the kitchen. Finally, Jenny got impatient and dragged her brother out of the house. Mel came to the door with me.

“How's Justin?”

“Fine. Extremely busy with getting ready for the show.”

She nodded, smiling proudly as every family member always did when it came to Justin’s success. I was still caught up in my mixed-up emotions about Gus and his needs and my own feelings of helplessness and inadequacy as a parent. I had wanted for a long time to put my appreciation into words, even though Justin had been, at times, profuse in his praise of Mel. But I couldn’t just say, ‘hey, Mel, I think you’re a great parent and thanks for looking out for Gus.’ That was never going to happen. Mel and I were really not in a place where I could say that. Since we had stopped sniping at each other at every opportunity, it was difficult to find words because, really, we didn’t like each other much more than we had before.

“Why don’t you come to his show in November?” I asked instead.

She smiled. “I don’t think I’m in a position to do that, Brian. But thank you.”

“Why don’t you try and get time off for then and I’ll fly you and Jenny and whoever in and put you up at a hotel for a few days?”

She looked at me for a long time. It wasn’t a peace offering. Peace had been forced upon us by Lindsay a long time ago, it was more me making it clear that, as far as I was concerned, she was as important as any other member of our family. Then she looked away towards the car, watching Gus help his sister put the seatbelt on. “Thank you,” she said without looking at me and her voice trembled.

Oh no, we were definitely not doing any of that! “I’m flying everyone else in, you know. Might as well lump you in with the rest of them.”

She snorted. “Good to know. You’ll bring JR back tomorrow at five? “

I just nodded and walked away to the car.

 

Saturday was spent at one of those indoor play parks that were incredible noisy and boring as hell. Lindsay and I sat at a table littered with drinks and snack food, while the kids raced about, screaming and laughing. We did this every Saturday when I was in Toronto, because it was suitable for both Gus and Jenny. Lindsay liked it because she could talk to me and pretend we were one big happy family. I liked having Lindsay with us to keep an eye on the kids, so I didn't have to. Gus was happy because he could play with his sister. And Jenny was just happy. Jenny was always happy, which came as a surprise to anyone who remembered her as the cranky baby she had been.

I let Lindsay’s chatter wash over me, only half paying attention, while I scoped out the talent. Usually I contented myself with spotting the closet cases amongst the other dads, flirting a bit but not seeing it through. I would never do that with Gus around. It was testament to my sexual frustration that even in this place – breeder central, if ever there was one – the sight of a semi-hot guy whom I knew I could persuade to meet me in the men's room if I put my mind to it, gave me a hard-on. Two weeks with just my right hand for company were definitely taking their toll.

Afterwards, there was pizza and Gus and I played games on his console while Lindsay got Jenny ready for bed and we carried on long after that.

Sunday was my guys-only day with Gus, which gave Lindsay some alone time with Jenny. We went swimming in the morning and my son was turning into quite the athlete already. Well, it was never too soon to start working on looking hot. After a quick lunch, we did whatever Gus wanted to do, usually a movie, or a few times we went to an ice hockey game. It worried me that our weekends were so repetitive, but Justin assured me that children thrived on routine and that Gus would be disappointed if his expectations weren't met. I bowed to his superior knowledge – and how did he always know this kind of shit anyway? – but I never lost that nagging worry that one day Gus would tell me that he was bored with seeing me and could I please not bother him anymore.

We went back to pick up Lindsay and Jenny to drive her home to Mel. Outside the house I offered to walk Jenny in, but it was not entirely unexpected when Lindsay said: “Don’t be silly. I’ll take her inside.”

“Not a good idea, Linz,” I said, but she paid me no heed and got Jenny and walked up to the house. I stayed in the car. No way was I getting involved in that train wreck. True enough, when Mel answered the door, it didn’t take long until it became obvious that they were having a heated discussion. I wanted to distract Gus with some chat but couldn’t think of anything to say and his eyes were glued to his mothers anyway, so I doubted he would have heard me. I wanted to tell him to just hang in there, that this was temporary, but as I didn’t know that for certain, I wasn’t going get his hopes up, in case I was wrong. I just reached back and squeezed his knees and he took my hand and held it until Lindsay came back to the car.

“Not a word,” I told her warningly and thankfully she adhered to that throughout the meal the three of us were having at the restaurant and the rest of the evening. In the end, I was glad, as always, to leave the house before either of them were up to fly back to Pittsburgh.

 

Going straight to the office from the airport, I was inundated with work all week. On Tuesday I had a close shave at the diner, where I was having lunch. There was a guy sitting at the counter, who eyed me with obvious interest. He was flaming hot, with an impressive package and an ass just begging to be fucked, which he was displaying to full advantage on the stool. I was rock hard and ready to drag him into the bathroom, when Debbie plunked my food in front of me and then herself into the opposite seat in the booth. She had brought her coffee and was obviously planning on staying a while.

“So, how is my lovely granddaughter and gorgeous Gus?”

I had never before been so happy to give her a minute by minute account of my weekend, but she didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. Any news about Jenny always had her enraptured. When I looked back at the counter as I got up to leave, the guy had gone. I gave Debbie a kiss on the cheek.

“What was that for?” she asked, half amused and half suspicious.

I shrugged, said, “See you later,” and left.

That night I finally got through to Justin after we had been playing phone tag for five nights and I didn't let him go until he had made me come twice. I felt I deserved a reward.

When I came across the same guy at the all-night convenience store on Balfour on Thursday night, he wasn't half as tempting. One more night of jerking off seemed to be achievable, and it was.

One thing I had learned over the last three weeks was that one orgasm was _not_ as good as another. I'd been known to fuck three, four times a day, every day, for extended periods of time, namely when Justin was living with me. Nowadays, we often managed more than that on the weekends that I saw Justin, though nature had set a limit there even for us. But over the last three weeks I was jerking off at least half a dozen times a day with monotonous regularity and it still didn't seem enough. Surely that proved some theory or other about not fucking being bad for your health. Or your mind. I was going crazy with sexual fantasies.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**PART THREE**

On Friday evening I was draped against the door jamb outside Justin’s apartment but removed my arm to stand up straight, when the ghost answered the door. Jeez, did that guy live here? He looked at me as if he was waiting for me to ask permission to come in, but I ignored him completely when I saw Justin come out of the bedroom in nothing but sweatpants, drying his hair after a recent shower.

He saw me and he looked...surprised?...worried? Not entirely pleased anyway, although this time he had known I was coming. “Why are you still here, Cas?” he asked in a sharp voice.

The ghost looked a little shocked and much hurt, probably at the tone and turned towards him. “I was just leaving. Why are you mad at me?”

Justin just glared at him until he gathered his things and said, “Let me know how it goes.” As he brushed past me to go down the stairs, I just caught a very smug grin aimed in my direction before I turned my attention to Justin. He had his thumbnail against his teeth and his chest was heaving with heavy breaths, and not in a good way. These were unmistakable signs of nervousness.

I went into the apartment and turned to shut the door. It gave me a moment to take a deep breath and put on my mask of indifference while he couldn’t see my face. I had a horrible feeling that this weekend had been derailed before it even began. Fuck and I was so fucking horny.

I walked over to him and combed his wet hair into some semblance of style with my fingers. He sighed and put his arms around my back. I was hoping that we could postpone the talk about what was going on until after our first fuck, or the first half dozen fucks even. In fact, I would have been happy to postpone it indefinitely. I knew what I thought he was going to tell me and I didn't want to hear it.

I kissed him and he responded as he always did, until I started walking him slowly backwards towards the bedroom.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I snorted indelicately. “I haven’t fucked for three weeks. Believe me, I’m sure.”

“I have,” he said forlornly.

“I know.”

“Oh.”

And that was all we said for the next two or three hours. I fucked him hard and then I did it again and one more time for good measure. There wasn't a single gentle gesture between us, just a lot of pulling and pushing, gasping and grunting, scratching and sucking hard enough to leave deep purple marks. I wanted to claim him, mark him as mine, make him forget whatever he had done. Then I willed myself to fall asleep. But in the end I knew it was futile. I couldn't avoid what he was going to tell me. I couldn't avoid how it would make me feel. The only thing I could influence was my reaction.

When I awoke, it was still dark, but the curtain was drawn back and I could see Justin looking out the open window, eerily illuminated even on the third floor by the ever-present street lighting. He was naked and smoking. The room was stuffily warm and staying still, pretending to be asleep, wasn’t an option. I just had to push the sheets off my sweat-soaked body. When that failed to make him turn around, I took one of his cigarettes from the bedside table and lit up.

“If you had told me, I wouldn’t have nearly killed myself holding out for three weeks,” I said.

“Did you really not fuck anyone for three weeks?”

I should have been insulted by the question and I would have been if it had sounded incredulous. As it was, he just sounded despondent.

“Longest three weeks of my life,” I said light-heartedly.

“And then I had to go and fuck it up.”

I got up and stood next to him, not touching, not yet. “So you fell off the wagon. It happens. Just proves that I was right all along. Men aren't meant to be monogamous.”

“I cheated.”

“Maybe technically, but I won’t hold it against you. If you’re not ready to do this, then we’ll wait. And if you’re never ever ready, that’s okay, too. Suits me. You know that.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?” he asked, turning to look at me, almost... hopeful. “You never wanted to stop tricking.”

Wow-ho, hold your horses. I gave him a long look and raised my eyebrow. “Aren’t you forgetting something? I’m the good guy for a change.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry. Did I say that? Because I am. I’m so sorry.” He came into my arms and I held him, dropping my cigarette into the ashtray on the window sill.

“Forget it,” I said. “But it would have been nice if you had told me. I’ve had a perpetual hard-on the whole time.”

“It only happened today.”

There were a lot of things I had learned to control in life. My body had learned to live without fatty or sugary foods; my cock had learned to stay up until I felt it was time to come; my face had learned to show nothing but indifference whenever I wanted it to. What I couldn’t control was the tensing of my body. It was an involuntary reaction to things I didn't want to deal with and it was subtle enough not to be noticed by an observer. But standing close to me, with his arms around me and both of us naked? Not a chance that he wouldn't feel it.

He moved back a little to look at me. Luckily, it was not light enough to see more than shadows and shades of grey. “It was Caspar,” he said. And even though I had known all along, somehow I'd been deluding myself all evening that Caspar had only been here to give Justin moral support because he was feeling guilty. Someone for Justin to talk to because he was dreading having to tell me.

I took a step backwards. “You fucked the ghost?” My immediate reaction was: ‘You stupid twat, what were you thinking? That guy is not gonna go quietly.’ Things that had seemed bad enough before, were so much worse now. Yes, the guy would kick up a stink if Justin tried to kick him to the curb after a fuck, but now I was wondering if Justin was actually planning on doing any kicking. He and Caspar were friends. Justin would not treat him like he would a random trick, despite some harsh words I had witnessed recently. He couldn't avoid him because they shared a studio. This would get ugly. That was the reason for rule number one: don't fuck your friends.

Self-delusion was a wonderful thing. I knew that I hadn't got to the bottom of things yet or _reached_ bottom either. For now, I was disappointed. Because he had behaved like an idiot, of course. Not because he had fucked around. _That_ I didn’t mind really. No, _really_. The discomfort I felt was just that: disappointment that he had been so stupid.

“It just happened. He was hot and he was there and I was horny.” Standard statement after a random fuck. I had said the same thing dozens of times. What I didn’t hear in that sentence was: it didn’t mean anything. But that was a given, right? And what I really couldn’t understand was that he lasted until the last day and then fucked the guy hours – minutes? – before I got here. He couldn’t wait that extra bit for me? Was fucking me really not that much different from fucking a trick? Was Caspar, the ghost, really that tempting? It just didn't add up.

“It’s gonna get messy, sunshine,” I sing-songed.

“It’s already messy.”

“Because he wants more than a fuck?”

“Yeah. And because I like him, so I can’t just tell him to fuck off.”

“It’s not as if you didn’t know that before you fucked him.”

“Jeez, Brian, thanks for the support.”

Support? _Support??_  “You expect me to console you because your BFF will get his wittle feelings crushed and you feel guilty about that? Please! Can we have a little of perspective here? You fucked up. Go fix it. Don’t expect me to help.” It felt good to be angry. Or rather it felt good to have found something to be angry about without looking like a love-sick fool in the throes of a jealous fit. “I’m going back to bed. You can stay here and carry on brooding or you can come to bed and fuck some more. It’s up to you.”

He did come to bed eventually, but not to fuck. By that time I was nearly asleep again and when he pushed his body against mine, I shrugged him off, mumbling a barely comprehensible, “Too warm for that.” He slept on the other side of the bed.

 

The whole weekend was a bust. We fucked, if anything with even more frequency than normal, but we did not really talk. On Saturday, I fell asleep on his couch for three hours and when I woke up, I was alone. He returned forty minutes later, smelling of paint and turpentine. I let him shower alone.

When we spoke to each other, there was an underlying testiness on both sides. I resented that _he_ seemed to be angry with _me_. What had _I_ done? At least _I_ had an excuse to be snarky. So, the whole weekend consisted of sniping at each other and long silences.

At one point I told him about my weekend in Toronto and he said grumpily that Lindsay really needed to get her act together. It was an old argument, but it was enough to make me blow my top.

“It’s not her fault that her parents screwed her up. First with their expectations of perfection and then with almost rejecting her when she came out. And totally rejecting her partner and kids. So she didn’t bounce back from that all strong and defiant. Not everyone does. Give her a break.”

He stared at me, taken aback, not by what I said – we had talked about all this before – but by the vehemence and the volume of it. “A bad childhood doesn’t give you license to fuck up constantly.”

And we both knew we weren't talking about Lindsay any longer. Okay, so I basically agreed with him (even about Lindsay – my gripe was about how we should react to her behavior, not an approval of it), but I felt unfairly attacked and was livid about it.

“I didn’t fuck up. _You_ did.”

“ _This_ time. And I only have your word for it that you didn’t fuck anybody.”

There was a silence so profound it seemed to be palpable. We were both standing up, because we were in the process of taking the breakfast stuff into the kitchen, and our eyes were locked. I could see his anger drain away, being replaced by shock and then regret. He set his empty cup and plate on the back of the couch without looking, not caring that the plate slipped off onto the seat, spilling crumbs everywhere. He rushed over to me and threw his arms around my neck, mumbling, “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” half a dozen times, while he was kissing me all over. So we fucked. That seemed to be the game plan for the weekend: don’t talk too much, snark and bitch when you do and then fuck the living shit out of each other when things get out of hand.

It worked – somewhat – until Sunday afternoon. I was just finishing my packing, which was not that much anyway, when his cell phone went off. He looked at the display and moved away from me to answer it. I let him have the physical space, but the flat was too small for any real privacy. So I listened to his grumpy monosyllabic answers, while I moved my small case near the front door and put all my other stuff on top of it.

“I can’t talk to you right now,” he was saying and it wasn't difficult to guess who was on the other end of the line.

“Yes, Brian's still here.” He sounded exasperated now. There was a pause and then he said curtly, “We'll have to discuss that later.  I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” He flipped the cell shut. "Sorry about that,” he said sheepishly.

I shrugged. “What are you gonna say to him?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You have to tell him to fuck off, Justin.”

“Like you did with Michael?”

“I never fucked Michael.”

“No, you just strung him along for years. I’m not quite that cruel yet. I’ll deal with Caspar. I just have to work out what I want and what to say.”

If that was how he wanted it, then that was what he would get. I really didn't want to get involved in that impending disaster anyway. It was his mess, he should sort it out. I didn't owe him any support in this and I was furious that he was attacking me at every turn. This would have been so much easier for me and so much quicker to blow over, if he had just shown remorse, said he would kick the ghost to the curb and given me a few conciliatory blow-jobs. Case closed and we could have moved on. But he insisted on taking Caspar’s feelings into consideration, who, by the way, had known full well that Justin wasn’t footloose and fancy free. He also turned this around on me at every opportunity, as if I had caused it. There was no way I would stand for that.

“You know what, sunshine,” I said with a mocking smile and a voice dripping with sarcasm. “Why don’t you work it out and let me know when you’re done.” I grabbed my stuff and left the apartment, ignoring his soft, “Brian.” and slamming the door.

I didn't hear from Justin for five days.

 

I was working my usual heavy workload every day and at night I went to Babylon. Normally, I would be at Babylon once or twice during the week, just to check up on things. I hadn’t tricked there for almost two years.

It had started with three tricks in a row asking me if we could go to the VIP lounge when I pulled them towards the backroom, as if just a fuck from me wasn’t good enough anymore. None of them had run away screaming when I declined, but it got me thinking. Were they worried I would ban them from the club if they didn't comply? (I knew that the Sap had used that threat to get laid and he probably needed the incentive, because who would fuck that guy anyway?) I would never do that. I was hot enough not to need to do that. But everybody knew I was the owner and who was to say that guys didn’t agree to fuck because they were worried what I would do if they didn’t or just to get into the VIP lounge or in hope of free drinks? It was a leftover from Michael’s ‘you’re an aging club boy’ speech that had festered over the years. So, to put my own mind at rest and to pre-empt any slanderous rumors, I had stopped tricking at Babylon.

I still tricked – well up until June I did – but now I did it at Woody’s or at the baths, and on business trips. There, no one even knew my reputation and I could still get whoever I fancied. Same at Woody’s and wherever else I went in Pittsburgh. In the end, my precaution had turned out unnecessary, but it left me with a slightly smug feeling of moral superiority, which gave rejecting advances at Babylon a whole new level of gratification.

But now I was on a mission. I pulled two or three guys a night, always in the backroom and as the news of my return with a vengeance spread, I was inundated with offers. It suited my purpose: I had to make up for three weeks of abstinence.

Emmett turned up on Tuesday, saying he wanted to see for himself if the rumors were true and he was there every night after that. Just one day for my return to become the gossip of Liberty Avenue. Not bad. Emmett watched me with an amused concern and by Thursday Ted had joined him in propping up the bar and taking lessons from the great Kinney. Neither one of them said much to me besides small talk, but they didn't look too happy either. Fuck them, I didn't interfere in their lives, they had better stay out of mine.

On Friday, I was late home from the office and had just changed into jeans and a wife beater after my shower, when the loft door was pushed open. I looked at Justin standing there, not sure if my prevalent feeling was surprise, relief or anger. He was expected to come home this weekend, because it was Daphne’s birthday, but after last week, his coming to the loft had been uncertain, to say the least.

I decided not to analyze how I felt about his presence or his motivation for being here. Pulling him inside, I pushed the door shut and kissed him with fervor. After an initial bewilderment, he pushed his hands in my hair and held me there while he responded. The unexpectedness of the encounter made it all the sweeter. I waited for him to pull my wife beater up to get to naked skin before I turned him and pushed him face first against the door. It was a familiar place for us to fuck. Sometimes the grinding against each other at Babylon or simple car rides with groping hands meant that this was as far as we got when we reached home. It always felt particularly hot. If he was wondering why I had lube and condoms in my pocket, he didn’t say anything about it. When I pushed  into him, he grunted a little and then pushed back against me and hissed: “Fuck me. Hard and fast.” I obliged.

Afterwards, when he was still wiping his come off the door, I had a quick shower and was done by the time he had dropped his bag in the bedroom and got undressed. He showered on his own without comment but watched me fixing my hair in front of the bathroom mirror with a frown when he had finished.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Babylon. You wanna come?”

“We could come right here,” he said with a smirk.

“We can do that after. Hurry up if you’re coming with me.” I half expected him to decline because Justin wasn’t stupid. He knew that things weren't right between us, but maybe he thought a trip to Babylon would help. We had always enjoyed dancing together.

Emmett greeted Justin with his usual enthusiasm, when we reached the bar at the club. He always made it sound as if Justin was some kind of superstar who was gracing his backwater hometown with his presence. The lad was only a short commuter flight away, for God’s sake. I left them for a while to go up to the office. I always liked to get the business out of the way first.

When I returned Emmett and Justin were dancing, but Ted and Blake had arrived.

“You didn’t say Justin would be in town this weekend,“ Ted said, his surprise showing.

“His fag hag is 27 tomorrow,” I said by way of an explanation.

Ted nodded a few times. “Have you looked at the books yet?”

“Yes, Theodore, I have. Everything’s fine. Go and enjoy yourself with your hubby.” Ted and Blake weren’t actually married. Well, according to the letter of the law, neither were Michael and Ben or any other queer couple, but these two had never even gone through the shambles of a ceremony. Instead, they had a house and a mortgage and two dogs. And they seemed extremely happy, and pleasantly less melodramatic than any other couple in our little family. Well, if you put your partner into a coma on your very first date, you probably lost your taste for dramatics after that. It was a hard act to follow.

I downed another shot and went to dance with Justin. He turned to me immediately and we did that swaying-together thing that we always enjoyed, with hands on hips and shoulders and grinding our bodies together. I was hard within two minutes and so was he. After three or four songs, we returned to the bar. I bought drinks for everyone and Justin started a conversation with Ted about some concert he had been to in New York. Who had he gone with? I wondered.

I took a look around and just in the immediate vicinity of the bar there were three guys cruising me. I picked the one who wasn’t a complete twink and wandered over in no hurry. He was almost as tall as me, dark hair, dark skin and a nice fuckable ass. I didn’t even need to say anything. He offered himself without any fuss and as we walked to the backroom together, I had to make a conscious effort not to look towards the bar.

When I returned, Emmett was in deep conversation with Justin until I reached the bar, which was when it ended abruptly. Ted looked at me with a strange look that I could not read, then followed Blake, who was already on the dance floor. Emmett glared daggers at me, while Justin found something intriguing in the woodgrain of the bar.

“Drinks anybody?” I asked jovially.

Emmett turned to Justin and said pointedly: “Give me a call if you have time to meet up this weekend, sweetie.” They kissed briefly on the mouth and, without another look in my direction, Emmett dived into the throng of dancers. It looked like I had become the devil incarnate again.

“What is his problem?” I asked.

“Compassion,” Justin snarked. “I’ll take that drink.”

I ordered two shots and two beers and we stood with our elbows on the bar, watching the world go by. We were both getting heavily cruised, but nobody actually approached and that was fine by me. After a while, Justin put his half finished beer back on the bar.

“I’m going home,” he said. “I’m tired from the flight.” He waited for the briefest of moments, obviously not expecting me to agree, before he started away from the bar.

I answered before he took two steps. “Okay. Let’s go home and fuck.”

He gave me a funny look, but when I took his hand to pull him out of the club, he let me and didn't let go until we got to the car.

 

So we had another weekend of sex and silence. I remembered them well from our second year together, just before he left with the fiddler and again for that period after he came back from LA and just before I came home one night to find him all packed and ready to move out. And, of course, there had been last weekend. It was all sickeningly familiar.

Saturday morning, Justin left to visit with his mother and then to go on to Daphne’s party. I had been invited to accompany him to both, but I declined. Instead I went to the gym and got sucked off in the steam room after my workout. Then I worked at my desk at home. Kinnetik was absolutely crazy at the moment. We fucked when he returned just after midnight and twice again the next morning. In the afternoon we went to Debbie’s, where he basked in everybody’s attention and then it was time to drive him back to the airport.

“Brian,” he said softly, when we reached the parking area.

“You’d better hurry or you’ll miss your flight,” I said with a smile.

He looked out the window for a moment, then nodded and just said: “Yeah.” Grabbing his bag out of the trunk of the car, he raised his hand once as a wave goodbye before I drove off. Not once did he mention tricking or coming home or Caspar, the fucking ghost, all weekend. And he hadn’t kissed me goodbye either.

 

The phone call came on Wednesday and I had been purposely staying in all week because I would be damned if I let him do this in a message. And there it was, right on cue.

_“Hey.”_

“Hey yourself.”

 _“Uhm, Brian, I won’t be able to be there next week like we planned.”_ It was almost comical how predictable he was.

“Oh?”

 _“Yeah.  I’m sorry. I was looking forward to seeing Gus but...”_ Now, this should be interesting. Or not, because there was a long pause.

“But...?”

 _“The thing is, Brian, things are so awkward between us right now. And I know it’s my fault. And... things are so easy with Cas and I... I want to see if this can go anywhere and...”_ And nothing, apparently, because all I could hear after that was his breathing.

“No problem,” I said and I was trying so damn hard to make my voice sound calm I didn’t even feel anything yet.

_“Don’t be like that, Brian. Don’t just dismiss us like that. We’ve been together for such a long time, you can’t just...”_

“Justin,” I interrupted a little harshly. I took a deep breath and made my voice a little gentler by sheer willpower. “You want out. I’m giving you an out. What more is there to say? Be happy. I’ll see you around.” And then I flipped the cell phone shut and concentrated on just breathing normally because that seemed to have become a problem all of a sudden. But I’d been here before and I knew it would pass. Eventually.

When the phone rang five minutes later, I switched it to voicemail without looking at the display.

 

I worked like mad for the next two and a half days because I knew I wouldn't be able to go into work for a week after Saturday afternoon. It also took my mind off things I didn't want to deal with. At night, I fell into bed completely exhausted just to get up early to do it all over again. I knew how to do this. This was how it worked.

There was a constant ache in my chest, which sometimes caught me off-guard when it cranked up a few notches to a level that seemed to take my breath away. I would pause then and swallow a few times and concentrate on anything other than Justin until I managed to push it back down to tolerable. It all felt so familiar that I was almost comfortable with it.

To be honest, a large part of what I felt was simply relief. For weeks now, if not months, I had known that Justin had a problem. If it had been about anything or anybody else, he would have talked to me, so I had known it was about me, or us. Now that it was all over, it was easy to see that it had started in March, when he had told me about coming home.

For a while there, I had thought it was about tricking, about him not wanting to put up with it any longer and being worried that I would not agree. Now I realized that he simply didn't want to come home. Having a weekend relationship with lots of fucking had suited him – after all, where was he going to get a better fuck than me? But it also gave him the freedom to have all his other needs met somewhere else, all his social life, all is emotional needs, things I couldn't give him. He was young. He now spent time with friends who were just as young, instead of hanging out with the guys, who were all approaching middle age. He had finally admitted to himself that what I gave him wasn’t enough.

I knew Justin. He wouldn't just throw me over without a reason because we had been through too much together and he had fought too hard for what we had. He simply wouldn't want to admit to himself that after all that, it just wasn’t what he wanted, that maybe the only reason he had wanted it was because it had seemed so impossible to get. So he had tried to create a reason by bringing up monogamy. Never in his wildest dream would he have expected me to agree in the first place, never mind being able to pull it off. Hell, _I_ was still stunned that I had. All his questions and the suggestions that he would be forgiving if I slipped up suddenly made sense. Only, I had thrown a pretty big spanner in the works by actually _not_ fucking up for a change.

I knew that he had done all this on a subconscious level because if he had realized where this was heading, he would have just come out and said it. He was, after  all, the most decent, honest and bravest little fucker I knew. Still, I couldn’t help wishing that he had been more aware of it. Because in all this time, I had known on some level where this was going. I had been anxious and edgy for months now. Maybe I had only managed that amazing three week period of no fucking because it had been a last desperate attempt on my part to stave off the inevitable. And maybe I had tried – just as subconsciously he had, of course – to flip him the finger for thinking he could manipulate me.

So in some ways, I was simply relieved. All my anxiety was gone, because finally what I had feared the most had come to pass, just as I had always known it would. The things I wanted the most were always either withheld or taken away from me. I wasn’t kidding about that, it was a fact of life, well, _my_ life anyway. But the pain I was left with, had been a pretty constant companion since my childhood, although now it was increased tenfold, because now I knew what it was like not to feel it all the time. Justin, and only Justin, could alleviate it, and that had always made me anxious even when things were good, or especially then. I was dependent on him for that absence of pain, for that feeling of contentment and excitement that he once told me: ‘...is love, Brian. You really have no clue, do you?’ It was the fact that I had to rely on another person to achieve this that made me so nervous about it. Because in the long run, they all left. I simply wasn’t enough. So yeah, all in all, I was more comfortable with the pain than the anxiety. It was familiar and I had only to rely on myself to deal with it. However awful it felt, it also put me back in control and I knew I could beat this. I had practiced it all my life.

 

Gus arrived late on Saturday afternoon. As this was the first year that Melanie had considered Jenny old enough to spend a week away from home, Michael had flown up to collect both kids and it was Ben who brought Gus. Michael probably had strict instructions to bring Jenny to Debbie’s without a moment’s delay.

“Hello, Brian, how are you?” Ben greeted me in his calm and friendly manner and then gave me a long searching look.

“Fine,” I said and turned my attention to Gus, hugging him and asking about the flight.  

He answered in his usual chatty way and his next question was, predictably: “Where's Justin?”

I could feel Ben’s gaze on me, probably wondering how I would cope with looking after Gus without Justin to help out. I had never had to do that before, because the lad had always been here for Gus’s holidays, no doubt putting all the other grown-ups involved in his care at ease.

Ordinarily, I would never lie to my kid. But over the last couple of days I had decided that, just this once, it was more important that Gus was not confronted with his other parents splitting up. He had enough on his plate with propping Lindsay up and missing Melanie. Hearing about Justin and me would only spoil his holiday which he probably desperately needed to be stress-free. 

“You know how Justin has this big show on in November? He'll be showing a lot of paintings, but he's really behind with painting them. So he has to stay in New York to finish them. A bit like having detention for being lazy, I suppose.” It wasn’t an outright lie. Justin _was_ very busy. I was just omitting the part where he didn’t want to be with me any longer. And, quite frankly, I was glad I didn’t have to say it out loud yet. “He's really sorry that he can’t see you.” That, at least, was the honest truth because he had actually said that. “But when his show comes up, we can go and see his paintings in New York and you can see him for a few days.”

Gus looked disappointed but not to an extent that I wouldn’t be able to make him get over it with a bunch of activities over the week. I felt a slight relief to see that he wasn't throwing a crying fit. I had been wondering if maybe seeing Justin was the part he looked forward to the most, but he appeared pretty happy to be here anyway.

I sent him off to call his mother, both mothers actually, to say that he had arrived safely and saw Ben to the door.

“Everything alright?” he asked almost casually, but not quite.

“Everything’s peachy, professor. I’ll see you at Deb’s tomorrow.” He nodded, waved a short goodbye to Gus and left. I breathed a sigh of relief.

I turned to watch Gus on the phone and I knew straight away which of his mothers he was talking to by the apologetic tone in his voice. “I’ll be fine, really. And the week will be over before you know it.” Jeez, shouldn’t parents assure their kid of these things, not the other way round? Now I knew that I'd made the right decision. Gus really didn't need any more parents to worry about.

When he spoke to Melanie, I could see him relax and tell her that it would be just him and me for the week, something he had neglected to tell Lindsay. He said goodbye cheerily and then it really was just him and me.

Michael and I had decided beforehand that it would be good if the kids could meet every day or almost every day, because they missed each other now that they were no longer living together. There was dinner at Debbie’s house on Sunday, going to the zoo on Monday but, to our surprise, Gus declined to go the amusement park on Tuesday or to Chuck E. Cheese on Wednesday. I assumed it wasn’t as much fun without Justin because we had always done this together in the previous years and Gus had always seemed to enjoy it.

Instead he wanted to go swimming with me every day. He wanted to join the swim team at school after the summer, so I took him to an adult pool I sometimes went to, not one of these kiddies’ places that had more slides and toys than water. He seemed to get a lot out of it. In the afternoons we went to see Jenny at Michael’s or Deb’s. Michael and I were pretty tight still. We talked on the phone two or three times a week and usually met at least once. We had both got extremely busy in recent years, me with Kinnetik and spending most weekends away from Pittsburgh, him with his shop and an online forum he was running about comic books. He also volunteered at the Vic Grassi house a lot and still had Hunter living at home, and then there was Ben, of course. But he could still make me laugh and he always made me feel better.

At the zoo he asked me about Justin and when I gave him the spiel about too many not yet existing paintings, he nodded but still asked if everything was alright. I looked at him and just said curtly: “Drop it, Mikey.” He rubbed exactly one slow circle on my back and left it. This was the new and improved version of Michael Novotny. I had a hard enough time trying not to remember the years before, when Gus and I had been here with Justin, and Michael pretended not to notice. I was grateful for that. And was it any wonder that I would always love the guy?

On Thursday, Cynthia called at lunchtime, when Gus and I had just returned from our swim, to tell me about a major fuck-up at Kinnetik. After the third phone conversation in two hours, Gus turned around and said, “You might as well go into work for a bit. I’ll bring my game.” Was that kid really only nine years old?

So we ended up at Kinnetik for three hours, me at my desk, Gus on the big white sofa, engrossed in his video game with the earplugs to his IPod in his ears. He was right, of course, everything seemed to get sorted a lot quicker with me on the premises. I could have discussions with Cynthia and Theodore and a whole lot of other people at the same time. I also made a few phone calls and then I just sat there and watched my son trying to kill something on some handheld games console.

Eventually I got up and sat next to him. He looked up and removed his earplugs.

“Finished?” he asked.

I nodded. “Gus... why didn't you want to go to Kennywood or Chuck E.’s? Really?”

He shrugged and looked away.

“Gus.” I waited until he was looking at me. “I won’t get angry or upset. Just tell me. I’m just curious.”

He looked at me for a while, trying to gauge what it was that he was supposed to do here. Then he made a decision and taking a deep breath, he said, “At the zoo you were sad. Not as sad as mom gets, but sad. A little. You miss Justin. With mom, I always avoid things that remind her and make her sad. I didn’t wanna do things that make remind you.”

Fuck. There went my great plan for making Gus’s time with me stress-free. My concern must have shown on my face because he felt the need to re-assure me. “I love swimming, Dad. I’m having a great time and I love just watching movies with you in the evenings and eating pizza and stuff. Just the two of us. We never did that before. But this is boring. So can we go now?”

I put my arm around his shoulders and squeezed him. “You don’t need to worry about me, Gus. I miss Justin, but with having you here I hardly noticed that he wasn’t here. It’s not your job to look after me.” Or your mother either. “Tell me what you want to do, really. We can do anything you like because it’s always fun with you, with or without Justin. So, tomorrow what do you want to do?”

“Honestly, Dad? I really enjoy the swimming now. So can we do that again tomorrow?”

“Sure thing, kid. Now let’s go and rent another movie and stuff ourselves with junk food. And after swimming tomorrow we go and buy you a new game for being so patient today.”

He beamed at that, earning himself half a dozen new games. Hey, I was his father. I was allowed to spoil him.


	4. Chapter 4

**PART FOUR**

After the kids went back to Toronto, I felt like I was falling into a hole. Sure, I would see Gus again in four weeks’ time, when I would be flying up for his birthday, but other than that, my weekends were my own now. I knew I couldn’t sustain going out and getting wasted every night. I just hadn’t the constitution for that anymore. Nearing forty meant that my body insisted on a modicum of sleep and sobriety and I could either deny my body or be on top form all the time. I could no longer do both.

So I compromised. Lots of work on weekdays, followed by a sensible meal and sleep. Lots of alcohol, drugs and fucking on the weekends, followed by junk food and little sleep. Half the time I couldn't have said how I got home on those nights. Throw in hours on the treadmill and at the gym and everything was just bearable through lack of brooding time. Mostly, anyway.

Michael turned up on the Friday of the third week and brought a supply of weed for us. So I had a night in with him and as we were lying on the rug, he prodded and prodded until I told him the whole story about Justin. He didn’t say much, but I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t too worried about it because he thought the split was temporary anyway. I'd never realized how annoying it was when people assumed that and you knew different. I had to stop doing that to Mel and Linz. But he turned up at Babylon the following night, which was rare for him nowadays, and it wouldn’t be the last time either.

The following Wednesday – it was the week I was due to fly up for Gus’s birthday at the weekend – I had a visitor at work. It was late, most of the staff had left, and I came to the door to receive Jennifer Taylor. She looked around my office and laughed. “I love what you’ve done with the place.” It was the first time she'd been here since the launch party.

I just grinned. Other than those business transactions some years ago, Jennifer and I had not much contact. It usually concerned Justin, planning things for him or simply making sure that our plans didn't interfere with each other, carrying presents to him or from him, that sort of thing. The social circles we belonged to were very different, with the only tenuous connection being her involvement in PFLAG, but my involvement with them was limited to the odd donation. A few times she had been at Debbie’s when I was there and once or twice I'd seen her at the diner.

“What can I do for you?” I asked a little apprehensively. I really wasn't looking forward to discussing Justin with her and what else was there?

“I was in New York on Monday.” Yeah, I was never wrong, even when I wanted to be. “I had a conference and was only there for one night. So I went to see Justin.”

I nodded and waited for her to continue.

“Justin was out but there was this kid there. He's a friend of Justin’s. Caspar? You know him?”

Didn’t I just! But again, I just nodded.

“Ah, you don’t like him either,” she said.

Fuck, obviously my mask was slipping. “You don’t like him?” I said in an amused tone.

“He was behaving as if he owned the place. When Justin came back, he had to practically push the guy out the door. Justin seemed quite upset.”

Well, I was surprised about that. Not about Caspar’s behavior, that sounded just like him, but about him getting pushed out the door. I would have thought that he would have wheedled his way into moving in by now. I remained silent, just looking at her expectantly.

“There's more,” she said and took a deep breath. “Justin was... how do you guys say it? He was... tweaked?”

“Tweaked.”

“Yes. It was only six in the evening and my son was on drugs. I don’t know what he took and I pretended not to notice but I know he was on something.”

I refrained from telling her how much drug taking Justin and I had done together over the years. Although it was a little disconcerting that he was tweaked when he wasn’t clubbing or having a wasted afternoon at home. Well, maybe he'd just been getting supplies for the munchies. I wasn’t going to initiate Jennifer into the ins and outs of recreational drug taking.

“And have you noticed how terrible he looks?”

“No, can’t say that I have,” I said sarcastically.

She frowned a little and then plunged on. “How could you not have noticed? He's lost weight and he has these dark circles under his eyes. He looks exhausted or ill. Don’t you think?”

“I really couldn’t tell you.”

That made her stop. I thought it was a little cruel of Justin to put his mother into this position, but then again, what did I know about mothers anyway? It wasn’t as if I ever really had one. Not a real one like Jennifer Taylor anyway. I should have thought that she had earned a bit more respect from him as well, but again: not my problem.

“When was the last time you saw him?” she asked gingerly.

“Middle of August.”

“Middle of...? ...Oh God, you two split up! Why on Earth wouldn’t he tell me that?” She looked so shocked and, yes, upset that I had to feel sorry for her. Justin really knew how to stick the knife in, although I was hoping that with his mother it wasn't deliberate. She really didn't deserve that.

Then she pulled herself together and all I could think was, ‘ _Oh boy, Justin’s so gonna get it!’_  She got up and brushed her clothes down, before looking me in the eye. “I am very sorry about this, Brian. I'm sorry if I've caused you any distress. I didn’t know. And if I have inadvertently let anything slip that Justin didn’t want you to know about, well, he deserves it for not telling me.” Yeah, he really was in for it.

I walked her to the door and lightly put my hand on her elbow to stop her from opening it just yet. “It probably doesn’t mean anything that he was tweaked. We all do it from time to time. Justin's pretty sensible with the stuff.”

“Maybe, but you didn’t see him,” she said, letting her worry shine through one more time. “And I’m worried about that guy. He seems such a leech and he's way too young for Justin.”

I looked at her, rolling my lips in to suppress an outright smirk. She finally realized what she had said and who she had said it to and smiled as well. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry to hear that you two... are having problems. I’m sorry that I bothered you. Take care of yourself, Brian.”

“You too, Jennifer.”

I held the door open and she nodded to me and walked away.

Well, if Justin was feeling and looking like shit on my account, then he only had himself to blame. Chances were though, that it had nothing to do with me. He was under a lot of stress at the moment. Ah, well, not my problem any longer and I didn't care much either way. I pondered if maybe I should make an exception and go out tonight. I felt like getting wasted and fucked out, even if it was a school night. I wouldn’t be able to do any of that at the weekend in Toronto. All good reasons, which had nothing to do with Jennifer’s visit. I should have asked her how many paintings he had completed. Just because I was curious. No other reason. It wasn’t my concern any longer.

The next day, I told Cynthia to make arrangements for everyone in the family to fly out to New York for the opening of Justin’s show.

 

The invitation arrived in the mail two weeks later. It looked the most pompous one yet but I supposed it was just the ad-man in me seeing past all the hype. At the bottom of the printed card was a note in Justin’s neat handwriting, saying: _‘It would mean a lot to me if you could be there. Justin’._ I was planning to anyway.

On Sunday, everybody was talking about it at Deb’s. Most of them had brought their invitations to show, as if, other than their names, there would be any difference between them. I had left mine at home. It was none of their business. During dinner I told them that I'd booked them flights and hotel rooms for a long weekend and could they get in touch with Cynthia as soon as possible so she could cancel or rearrange reservations if they didn't suit? There was a stunned silence to that announcement, then everybody was thanking me at once. It wasn’t as if I’d never done this before. I had. For Justin’s first show. But by now, everyone knew that we'd split up and they maybe hadn’t expected it after that. I'd always planned to do this when I had thought it would be the last show before he came home. Kind of like a ‘first and last’ thing. (Not that I expected this to be Justin’s last show by any stretch of the imagination.) I saw no reason to change it now. A bit of moral support would be nice, too.

“I suppose I will have to ask the boss for some time off,” Ted said when we were sitting down after dessert. “Are _you_ going?” His tone was light, masking his concern well.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He shrugged. “No reason. Think Kinnetik can survive with both of us absent?”

I grinned. “Cynthia could probably run the show while filing her nails and playing online games. We’re just deluding ourselves that we’re actually needed.”

He laughed, gave me a friendly clap on the back and went over to Blake. Ted was a good guy and surprisingly easy to work with. His new-found confidence suited him and we complemented each other well. But most of all, I trusted him completely with my money and so far, he had well and truly earned that trust. I looked into my coffee and wondered why I was really going to New York. Ted’s question wasn’t so absurd. I had no real reason to be there.

 

We arrived in New York on Friday evening. Ted was on his own because Blake hadn't been able to get time off from his job as a drug counselor and Emmett had split from his beau of the month three days before, so he was stag as well but the rest of them were all there. I knew Jennifer was in town, too, with Molly because Deb had told me but they weren’t at the same hotel we were in. They had made their own arrangements. In fact, I wouldn't have been surprised if they were staying with Justin. They had done before, for one of his other shows.

Jennifer was probably taking them out for a meal, if Justin was even able to swallow something. He was always incredibly nervous before his shows. I didn't think it would be appropriate to tell Jennifer that her son just needed a good fucking to calm him down. Well, maybe Caspar would be able to oblige with that later. Although, if his mother and sister were really staying with him, Justin would have to try and keep the noise down. I remembered well how we had achieved _that_ the last time.  

The munchers had both opted to come alone with the respective child in their care. They had even agreed to be on the same flight, as that ‘would make travelling with children a lot easier’. There had obviously been a thawing in their relationship, which was surprising since Gus’s birthday had been an exercise in avoidance on both their parts. In fact, they decided to sit together during the meal at the hotel, with Gus asking to sit by my side and Jenny spending more time on Debbie’s or Michael’s lap than in her chair.

Melanie and Lindsay were so chummy at the dinner that I felt tempted to ask the hotel staff if they could change the two double bedrooms to a four bed suite, but I hadn't interfered in their relationship woes so far and I wasn’t going to start now. I just hoped that they got their act together, if only for the hope and relief in Gus’s eyes when he looked at them. Their antics had the added advantage that everybody was so pre-occupied with them that no one had time to wonder how I might feel about seeing Justin. At least no one said anything about it and that was good enough for me.

 

The opening was at eight o’clock the next day. It was a black tie affair, as expected from such a prestigious gallery. I had made sure that Debbie had a new dress, chosen for her by a personal shopper Cynthia had recommended, and she looked very nice and understated. I wouldn't have worried about anything she might have decided to wear, but, contrary to how brash she appeared to be most of the time, she also knew when it was time to tone it down. I had been concerned that _she_ would have been self-conscious all evening if she wasn't dressed in keeping with the affair. I didn't give a fuck what anybody else thought _about her._

Justin spotted us as soon as we entered, even though he was talking to somebody in a tuxedo at the time, and his face lit up in the biggest smile imaginable. He had known that we were coming but his pleasure shone from him. I spotted Jennifer and Molly over to one side and steered the group over there, holding Gus back by his shoulder before he could race over to Justin. Jennifer greeted us all and squeezed my arm for the barest of moments in a silent thank you.

Then Justin was there and there were hugs galore. He spent quite some time talking to Gus and I had leisure to look at him properly. Jennifer was right, he had lost some weight, which Deb had also noticed and pointed out, followed by promises of various foods she would be sending by airmail. His face was rather pale but the rings under his eyes were not as pronounced as I had feared from his mother’s account. I would have easily attributed them to worry about the show, not to being ill or even drug use. Justin was _fine_.

Eventually, it was my turn to be greeted. There was an awkward moment when he seemed to want to hug me like he had everyone else, but I made no move in his direction and in the end, he just put his hand on my forearm for a couple of seconds and smiled. I felt every eye in our little group on us and so did he apparently, because he half-turned away from them and took a step or two. I followed suit because he was saying, “Hey, Brian,” at the same time. “I’m glad you could make it.” He sounded sincere.

 “This is very impressive, Justin,” I answered evenly.

“Thank you.”

“And I had to check up on my investment, of course.”

“Of course,” he laughed. “Gus has grown again since I last saw him.”

“Kids do that. I must tell him to stop. He’s costing me a fortune in designer clothes.”

He snorted. “Like you would allow him to wear designer clothes. You'd freak out every time he gets a spot of mud on them. But he does look very dashing tonight.”

“Yeah, we rented it this afternoon. Even _I'm_ not quite mad enough to actually _buy_ my ten-year-old a tuxedo. And this one _is_ designer.”

He smiled, looking into my eyes, until he seemed to notice that for him to have a reason to do that, we would actually have to have a conversation and cleared his throat. I decided to take pity on him.

“So where's the ghost tonight?”

 His face fell and I took an almost cruel satisfaction in that. “Hopefully in a galaxy far, far away.”

“Do I sense a disturbance in the force?” I smirked. I really had no reason to be charitable here.

“We only lasted three weeks. And then I had real trouble getting my key back.”

“Actually, that's quite simple,” I said coldly. “You say, ‘give me my key’ and he hands it over.” And if he had just told him to fuck off at the time, we wouldn't be stuck here making awkward conversation.

“Yeah, I tried that. What I didn’t know was that he had copies made. In the end, I had to have the locks changed. It was all very tedious.”

“Yeah,” I smiled. “That’s why I stay clear of relationships.”

He looked a little hurt by that remark, but I didn’t care. This was his doing. I was the injured party here and I was a long way away from forgetting that, if I ever would. Just then, his agent came to whisk him away to speak to more important people. I understood. He was here to schmooze and impress. It was part of the game.

I nodded to Stefania, his agent, who nodded back at me, recognizing me from the few times we had met before and then I turned to look at the art. At least this time I didn't have to check if it was actually Justin’s work I was looking at, though in general I could tell without reading the plaques. Tonight it was _all_ his.

My knowledge of art was mainly due to reading books about it and what Lindsay had tried to force-feed me in college. It was quite extensive because I had realized very early on that clients were impressed by that sort of thing. But it was just that, knowledge. My heart wasn’t in it. Not until I'd met Justin, had my interest become more personal and now I could not only identify the lesser known artists, too, I also knew obscure facts that Justin had a habit of imparting. And I also had likes and dislikes now. Justin’s work was definitely a like. And I wasn’t the only one. He was gradually becoming quite sought after.

Looking at his art, I was only half seeing it. It didn’t matter; I could stare at it for hours without a clue about what I was looking at and still appear to be a sophisticated connoisseur. In reality, I was thinking about what he had said. So, they'd only lasted three weeks, no great surprise there. It wasn’t that I couldn’t imagine Justin with anybody else. I could. All too easily. But someone more his equal, not some kid with a crush on him, who wanted to bask in the reflected glory of his talent. That was the reason I never took the ghost seriously. And no, his age didn’t come into it. I wasn’t that much of a hypocrite. Even at seventeen Justin had been more my equal than that guy would ever be his. 

One might think that the two of them being together for such short time would have pleased me, but it had the opposite effect. I had felt like he'd punched me when he said it and now I was seething with anger. All it proved was that he had used Caspar as an excuse to end things between us. He was never serious about the guy, he just wanted to get away from _me_. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to breathe normally again. Then I felt a familiar hand on my back, rubbing exactly one circle.

“He looks tired,” Michael threw out tentatively, testing my mood.

“He is fine, Mikey.” It came out sharper than intended.

“Is his stuff any good? I can never tell, you know. I kinda like it, but is it actually _good_?”

I had to laugh despite myself. I put my forearms on his shoulders and my forehead against his. “You are sooo pathetic, Mikey. But I love you anyway.”

“I know,” he said, grinning, and rubbed a hand up and down my back a couple of times. “Me too. Always have.”

“And always will.”

Re-runs of the Brian and Mikey show – things had to be bad. I looked up and ran my eyes over the staff distributing drinks and canapés. Michael knew immediately what I was doing.

“Brian,” he said warningly.

“What?”

“You are not gonna fuck some waiter at Justin’s opening,” he hissed.

“Isn’t that what the ‘openings’ are for?”

“Brian. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve it... Actually I _am_ saying he doesn’t deserve that. Nobody does. He’s worked so hard for this. And this is his business. Don’t ruin it for him.”

“I’ll be in the men’s room. He’ll never know.”

“Yes, he will. He always does.”

I was already trying to make a decision between two possibles. If anything, disapproval always egged me on. But Michael was smarter nowadays and less afraid of pissing me off. “Brian,” he said again and when I gave him quick glance, making it obvious that he had only half my attention and even that not for much longer, he said just one word, “Gus.”

Fuck, I’d nearly forgotten that I never, never tricked with Gus around. I didn’t want him to find out what a slut his father was, even though eventually he would. It was inevitable. But for now, he still admired and loved me. I wouldn’t jeopardize that. I stared at the floor, collecting myself and nodded. Damn Michael and bless him at the same time. “I’m going outside for a smoke.”

He nodded, never doubting my word and when I came back in, I was stuck with a chaperone for the rest of the evening. When Gus wasn’t with me – which he was most of the time, chatting about Justin’s paintings – either Ted or Emmett would materialize by my side. I would have been angry if it hadn’t been so comical. And eventually all the free champagne made me too mellow to care.

 

I never did find out who suggested we should all go back to our hotel and have a drink at the bar to celebrate Justin’s achievement. And ‘all of us’ also included Jennifer, Molly and Justin. We all walked there when the gallery closed at eleven. Cynthia had picked the hotel precisely because it was within walking distance, though it was quite good, too.

We more or less took over the barroom, pushing tables together and taking up half the available space. I didn’t fancy carrying dozens of drinks over from the bar, so I gave the barman a tip to serve us at the table, which he was happy to do, as we soon became his only customers. Debbie volunteered to watch over the kids in her room. It seemed that even watching her granddaughter sleep made her happy. Jenny had really struck it lucky with her parents and grandparents. Gus grumped for a bit that it was too early for him to go to bed and pleaded with me to let him stay, but with both his mothers around, it was luckily out of my hands. Melanie just shook her head decisively and Gus stopped arguing. Damn, she was good at that. I promised him a swim in the hotel pool in the morning and he trotted off with his sister and Debbie, who would no doubt let him watch TV all night.

Jennifer started the evening off nicely – by putting her foot in it. Looking at Melanie and Lindsay, she came out with, “It’s nice to see you back together.” Everybody fell silent because we had been studiously ignoring the situation, in case we trampled on something fragile that was just developing. But Jennifer didn't know that. She saw what we all saw, came to the same conclusion we all had and, not knowing that this wasn't something well established yet, voiced her pleasure.

“Mother,” Justin said quietly and admonishingly, embarrassed, as he inexplicably often was by his mother.

Jennifer looked uncomfortable and confused, then smiled apologetically at the munchers. “Sorry, if I spoke out of turn.”

“Ah hell,” Melanie said. “We're not quite there yet, but we’re working on it. And it’s good that you said something because these guys have been tiptoeing around us for the past thirty hours and it’s getting old.”

“Hear, hear,” Ted said and everybody laughed.

“Just don’t say anything to the kids yet,” Melanie added warningly.

I watched her, while everybody started talking again and wondered if she felt like a sap for taking Lindsay back every time. She seemed very happy, almost glowing, and I thought that she probably didn’t waste any time on regrets once she had made her decision. No matter what Lindsay had done in the past or would do in the future, Melanie would always take her back. Some people were just like that. So the question was: why did we all perceive Lindsay mostly as sweet and innocent and Mel as tough as nails? Go figure.

Of course, everyone wanted to know how Justin was doing and he talked at length about how he'd had real problems getting enough pieces together for the show and how they had to put them up at the last minute because of some mix-up with the electrician at the gallery. His agent had told him that the critics had voiced very favorable opinions, that there was a lot of interest from patrons and that he had sold two pieces tonight. There were shouts of congratulations and another round was ordered from the barman.

“So what are you going to do now?” Ted asked. “Going on vacation to recover from all the hard work?”

“Actually, I have a couple of ideas for more pieces already. I just need to wait until I've relocated.”

I had been watching him lazily from under my eyebrows, but I was too drunk not to react. My head came up and I stared at him.

“I’m moving back to Pittsburgh,” he said, looking straight at me. His mother and sister must have known this already, because they didn’t react, while all my friends looked at me before they even attempted to comment.

“You are such a fucking asshole,” I said quietly but put as much venom into my voice as I possibly could. I got up, threw enough money on the table to drink the bar dry and walked out. My first instinct was to go to my room and barricade myself in, but I couldn’t smoke there, so I walked out of the hotel and lit up. My money was on Michael following me out, but it was Justin who came rushing after me.

“What is your fucking problem?” he shouted at me.

“I don’t have a problem.”

I looked at the hotel doorman, decided that I’d rather not have an audience and walked around the side of the building into an alleyway.

“Then explain to me why you were swearing at me when I tell you something that you knew all along!”

Yeah, what exactly was my problem anyway? Well, for starters I'd expected those plans to have been scrapped. That had been the whole point, right? That had been what had set it all off: that he hadn't wanted to have to come home. That he could stay here, away from me. I'd got used to the idea and seen certain advantages in it, for him and me. But I couldn't tell him that. I wouldn't admit that he had taken me completely by surprise.

“You knew I wanted to come home, Brian. We talked about it.” He was a little quieter now.

“Yeah, we also talked about not tricking and that didn’t happen either.”

He ignored that. Smart guy. “I want to come home, Brian. I’ve been ready for a while now, I was just waiting for this show because we said after the third solo show. So I waited for that. See it through, you know. But now I want to go home.” _We_ never decided anything. _He_ had come up with that benchmark all on his own. I remembered distinctly that I thought at the time, it was like saying ‘after I win the lottery’ because he'd only had a shared showing in a tiny gallery by then. I thought that was the point, that it might never happen, that he'd said it so he could stay here forever.

I was surprised when his career took off all of a sudden after Stefania took over as his agent. Not that he wasn’t good. It was just that so much in the art world depended on luck and who you knew and if you were willing to put out. I'd been wondering then, if he was as surprised as I was and if he was regretting what he'd said. I'd always been convinced that he would never come home, would never want to. He should have known that I would have understood. And I'd been proven right, hadn’t I? But now he was no longer content with having his freedom. Now he wanted to have that freedom in Pittsburgh and I wasn’t having any of that. Pittsburgh was _my_ place. I didn't want to run into him at every turn. That was unacceptable and yet I had no power to stop it. I knew that in the end he would just do as he pleased. He always did. And that was what made me incandescent with rage.

I threw my finished cigarette on the floor and fumbled for another one. I was so angry, my hands were shaking. He stepped closer to me and I wanted to warn him that it wasn't a good idea. The state I was in and with the alcohol I had consumed, I wasn't quite in control of my actions. But he either didn't realize it or he trusted me more than I trusted myself. Probably the latter, he was fearless like that.

 “Brian,” he said throatily. “I want to come home. To you. If you’ll have me.”

I could only stare at him, my still unlit cigarette crumbling under the tightening of my fingers. Was he crazy? “You want _what_?” I finally croaked out.

“Come home to you. Be with you. And I’m willing to put up with you punishing me in your own unique style for quite a while. I fucked up. You have no idea how sorry I am. So I say it again: I’m sorry. I fucked up. Spectacularly. Please take me back anyway. I beg if you want. I want you, just you. And I need you and I love you. Please let me come home. Take me with you when you go back. Please, Brian. I miss you. And I...”

He was rambling and I was too stunned to form any words, so I kissed him. At least that shut him up. He kissed me back, wrapping his arms tightly around my neck at first and then dropping them, so he could pull my shirt out of my pants and get to my skin. Well, if that was how he wanted it, that was fine by me. I tore at his clothing until his pants were around his knees. Then I turned him head first against the wall and got my cock sheathed with a condom.

“No lube,” I warned him and he nodded, his cheek scraping ever so slightly against the brick, we were pressed that close together, but I didn't care. We were about fifteen yards from the well used road and the alleyway wasn’t particularly dark. But I didn’t care about that either. It was conceivable that his mother might come looking for him. Didn’t care. My friends coming out here? Really nothing they hadn’t seen before. I made him suck on my fingers and stretched him but probably not for long enough. Then I spat as much as I could on my hand to use that as lube. At least the condom was lubed. He groaned when I pushed into him. Slowly. Maybe he had been right before. I would never hurt him.

The relief of being inside him again was indescribable, but the inevitability of it made me want to weep. I knew that if he insisted on coming home to me, there was nothing I could do. There was nothing I would want to do about it either. So I thrust and concentrated on just that, because whatever was wrong with us, this was right and when I was doing this I could even forget that there _was_ something wrong with us. He moaned and pushed back against me and hissed, “Harder, Brian.” and when he came, he almost sobbed and then said “I love you.” very quietly.

I just put my forehead between his shoulder blades and tried not to scream with frustration.

My anger seemed to drain away with my come into the condom. And then it hit me how crazy it was what we had just done. This wasn’t Liberty Avenue. If we got arrested for indecent behavior, it would be bad enough for him, but my business might take a serious nosedive because, although almost all of my clients knew I was gay, there was a whole lot of difference between knowing that and reading that I was caught fucking in an alleyway.

I leaned my shoulder against the wall, shielding us from the main road and disposed of the condom on the floor. There were some cigarette butts, but no other condoms. Really _not_ Liberty Avenue. When I was presentable, I watched him as he finished cleaning himself up, zipped his dress pants and smoothed his dark shirt down. No tuxedo for the free-spirited _artiste_. Well, not seeing him in a tuxedo always suited me.

Finally, he was done and looked up at me and smiled. I ran my thumb over his cheek where there was a small red mark. The skin wasn’t anywhere near broken and Jennifer would probably not know what it was, but any queer who was practicing our lifestyle would identify it easily as a ‘brick bruise’. It was an occasional side effect of fucking against vertical surfaces and occurred mainly on the cheeks and foreheads and sometimes on the forearms.

“Are you alright?”

There were some fundamental truths about Justin and me. I would never hurt him physically. He would always get what he wanted, if he put his mind to it. His well-being would always be paramount to me. And he would always be braver than me, because he scared the shit out of me without even knowing or trying.

“I’m fine, Brian.” He tilted his head up and I kissed him, softly and prolonged and when we stopped, he sighed. That was more like it. Because what happened before – that wasn’t really us. We'd had angry fucks in the past and by definition they had always been rough, but none had been quite so brutal or so serious or so close to inflicting real pain. I had never been this close to actually _wanting_ to inflict real pain and I never ever wanted to be that close again.

“Do you want to go up to your room?” he asked with a smile.

“What about your mother and Molly?”

“Mom knows how to hail a cab and she has a key.”

“Better make sure she doesn’t have any copies made.”

He pulled a face. “Not funny.” But then he laughed anyway.

 

And that was that. We went upstairs and fucked until his already sore ass gave out. When Gus pounded on my door the next morning to go swimming, it felt like I had been asleep mere minutes.

Justin went back to his apartment to have brunch with his mother and Molly and see them off to the airport for their flight in the afternoon. Incidentally, Ted was on the same flight back to Pittsburgh. The rest of us stayed at the hotel until Tuesday, did a bit of shopping and sightseeing and enjoyed an extended weekend. After his family left, Justin was with us practically the whole time and then we relocated to his apartment. He had to stay until the following Sunday because he had obligations at the gallery, but in the meantime we packed up his stuff. He had cancelled his lease for the apartment and the studio and in the end he got his wish: I took him back with me when I went home. 

Our friends had taken our reunion without comment, except for Debbie who'd mumbled, “About fucking time.” They all seemed to have expected it, just as we had all expected the munchers to get back together. Gus was quietly happy about his mothers and more openly pleased about his fathers. I supposed he had seen too many break-ups between Mel and Linz to be anything other than cautious. By comparison, Justin and I had been together for as long as he was old enough to notice these things and he hadn't really been that aware that we were actually broken up, he had just thought we'd had an argument.

Michael had come to my hotel room after my swim to give me back the extra money I had left at the bar the night before.

“So, am I poor now?” I asked, putting it into my wallet.

“Oh, please,” he laughed, “there isn’t enough drink in the hotel to make you poor.”

“You guys are just getting old and can’t hold your liquor anymore.”

He laughed and plunked himself on the newly made bed. Ah, the joys of hotel housekeeping! I was in the process of selecting a shirt to wear.

“The green one,” he said. “So, are you and Justin gonna live together now?”

I picked out the red shirt. “Trying to anyway,” I said. I put the red shirt back and put on the green one. It did look good on me.

“Trying to? You guys haven’t sorted everything out yet?”

“Well, I put all the plans for the house on hold when he started ghost hunting. So only the kitchen, the living room and the studio are done, because he put that in motion before he went back to New York. First I thought I had plenty of time, then it didn’t matter anymore. I suppose I have put a rush on it now.”

There was a long pause and when I met his eyes in the mirror, he had his ‘don’t bullshit me’ look.

“What?” I asked, playing dumb anyway.

“You know what. Please, tell me that you two have talked about things. Like what your expectations are and monogamy and stuff.” Jeez, Ben was really rubbing off on him.

“Really didn’t have much time for anything other than ‘harder’, ‘faster’ and ‘just there’ last night. And why do you care? We’ll sort it out somehow. What do you think of sage green for the master bedroom at Britin?”

“Brian,” he said and there was just a hint of his old whining in there, telling me that he wouldn’t let this go. “You must talk and soon. Otherwise, you’ll be back to square one by Christmas.”

I sighed. “We will, okay? So, now: sage green? For the master bedroom?”

He laughed. “I’ve only seen the fucking mansion once and that was three years ago. How the fuck would I know?”

Later, when I looked back on it, I always thought how times had changed, when the one person trying to make me see sense and help keep Justin and me together was Michael. And how much trouble I could have avoided if, for once, I had actually listened to him.


	5. Chapter 5

 

**PART FIVE**

It was almost as if Justin had never been away. He'd never kept much stuff at the loft. When he'd lived with me, he had always kept the clutter to a minimum, because he'd been worried that seeing it would make me feel trapped and act out. When he had lived in New York, there had always been clothes in my chest of drawers and my wardrobe and sketchpads and other drawing utensils on the shelves. There were some CDs and DVDs which he could rightfully claim as his but had never bothered to take. During our recent break-up, I'd left everything as it was, waiting for him to come to collect it or send his mother to do so. I wasn’t going to do the packing for him.

Now, there were more clothes and more drawing stuff and quite a few books, but other than that, the loft looked no different. Most of his possessions were left in boxes, which we'd dropped off at Britin when we got home.

He bought himself a car during his first week back and then spent his days at Britin, painting. It had the advantage that whenever deliveries arrived for the rooms still to be furnished, he would be there to receive them. We also had the painters in for two weeks. When he'd moved to New York, I'd hired a housekeeper to keep things going at the house. Now, she and her son were there two or three times a week to clean and tidy and do small jobs in the house and garden. I assumed Mrs. Hanson also cooked for Justin when he was there. I didn’t ask.

I saw very little of him, almost less than when we'd seen each other most weekends in New York. It started with having to make up for that extra week I took off work after his show. Catching up on the business meant long hours during the week and even going in on Saturdays. Sundays were the only days we spent together, usually at Deb’s. He was always at the loft when I got home after work. He chatted as he was wont to do. We fucked – a lot – and the rest of the time we mostly slept, or at least I did.

There were a lot of business trips. Even half of Thanksgiving was taken up by one, but with my workload they almost seemed like holidays. There was only so much work I could do when I was not in the office. So I went out clubbing most nights when I was away.

I knew Justin was expecting some kind of punishment from me, namely in the form of throwing my tricking in his face. It would have been easy to do because he had practically given me permission in that alleyway in New York and then it would have been just a matter of seeing how long he was willing to silently put up with it. But I was never one to do what was expected. It was a lot more fun to keep him guessing. I stopped tricking at Babylon again and even at Woody’s, if there was anybody there who was likely to talk to him. I tricked as much as I had time for, but I was incredibly discreet about it. Only on business trips did I fuck anyone I could lay my hands on.

We never talked about it. I wouldn’t have denied it if he’d asked me, but he didn’t. I didn’t speak about it, to him or anybody else. I kept condoms for tricking separate or bought packs on the go and discarded what I hadn’t used before I got home. And every time I fucked some guy in a bathroom stall or up against some alley wall, I felt a strange satisfaction that I had pulled one over on Justin yet again. It was my way of saying ‘fuck you’ for what he had put me through and the fact that I didn’t throw it in his face every time, made it all the sweeter. I wanted him to have doubts, to not be sure what I was doing, to hope that I wasn’t tricking after all. It would drive him nuts and then I definitely wanted him to find out about it.

I was the perfect boyfriend. I called him every time I was going to be late, I spoke nicely to him, I fucked him and I even picked up groceries on the way home if he asked me to do so. At home, I made polite, shallow conversation, interspersed with sexual innuendos and listened patiently to his chatter, neither encouraging nor discouraging it. Sometimes his words would just peter out, as if he had started to wonder halfway through his conversation if there was any point to it. He couldn’t tell what I was up to, he was unsure about the tricking and at first he just seemed perpetually confused.

I never gave him anything concrete, so he had nothing to pin his uneasiness on. My polite detachment, together with his doubts about my tricking, which I assumed he sensed rather than knew about, made him increasingly nervous. But it was all so vague that I could have easily denied anything was wrong, if he had talked to me about it, and there was nothing to tell other people. It made it impossible for the family to notice anything and interfere, robbing him of any possible moral support. It was designed to be his own private hell.

And it worked, too. As the days turned into weeks, he became quieter, almost meek, and he was watching my moods constantly, like he used to. He tried to appear unaffected in an effort to stop me from doing it, but he couldn’t quite pull it off. There were always tell-tale signs: looks of crushed hope, hurt and profound unhappiness.

Justin thrived on intimacy. He eagerly pounced on every little crumb of affection I deigned to dole out on rare occasions to throw him off balance. The whole situation was killing him inside, but he silently persevered, because persistence was Justin Taylor’s middle name. I just took a cruel satisfaction in his abject misery. It seemed a fitting punishment for the two and a half months of agony he had put me through. 

 

One day, just before Christmas, Theodore poked his head in my office door and asked if I had a minute. It was late, after seven o’clock, and I was surprised that he was still here. He closed the door carefully, although I doubted that there was anybody else left in the office, and sat in the chair in front of my desk, smoothing down the folds of his trousers.

“Nice suit,” I commented.

“Yeah, I bought it for the trip next week.”

We had a trip to Cleveland scheduled for the three days before the Christmas break to iron out some details with Farber Fashions, one of our minor clients.

“So what’s up?”

“It’s about the trip.”

I raised my eyebrows questioningly. I'd thought that everything was in place for that and was hoping there was no last minute hitch. That would really fuck up my weekend, short as it always was.

“What about it?”

“Are you happy with what we’ve got? The campaign? The contracts? The schedule?”

“Uhm, I _was_ until you just asked me that. Is there a problem I’m not aware of?”

“That’s just it, Brian. It’s all terribly straight forward and practically done and dusted.”

I really couldn't see where he was going with this. If there was no problem, why were we even talking about it? I looked at him, frowning to make my confusion clear.

Theodore took a deep breath and said, “Why are _you_ going?”

Of all the things he could have said to me, that one wouldn't even have made it onto the list. “What the fuck are you talking about, Theodore?” My tone was still light-hearted.

“Here's the thing,” he said, scratching his head nervously. “Over the last few weeks, you've gone on every business trip that came up. And even on a few that you just took on the off-chance of being able to pitch. And it’s great and it’s bringing in business and you are the boss, of course. But Cynthia and I are worried about you. It feels like you're doing it just for the sake of it. We've more business than we can cope with without hiring new staff anyway. A lot of these trips didn’t need your personal attention. And if you go yourself, why take the account executives with you? They’re just sitting there, twiddling their thumbs. And they’re beginning to wonder if you don’t trust them. Because Jake and Tamara are good. That’s why we hired them. They can do this and they'd like to, because it’s their accounts. So I've been wondering, Bri... are you doing this because you’re obsessed with the business or... because you don’t want to go home?”

“Excuse me?” I asked coldly.

“Well, if you're doing it because of the business, you’re going about it the wrong way. We might lose both, Jake and Tamara, if you don’t let them handle their own accounts... if you carry on like this. And if you're trying to avoid going home, then...” He took a deep breath. “Well, then you should fix that because you might lose Justin and you can’t hire a new one of those.”

“Did Justin put you up to this?” It was out before I had finished thinking it. Unable to take the words back, I contented myself with glaring at him.

“What? Of course not. Do you really think that's the type of conversation Justin and I could _ever_ have? We talk about books and politics and concerts.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose to keep my temper in check. This was a place of work after all. “Theodore, there are lines that should never be crossed. You are so far beyond that line you’re in pink slip territory.”

He nodded enthusiastically and I would have expected him to scuttle out of the office at once. But he just sighed and said, “I know. And if I were just your CFO, it would be Cynthia sitting here or Jake or Tamara. But I’m your friend and I thought I’d do this before they decide to. All I’m saying is: whatever the problem is – be it business or private – you should maybe find a better way to approach it.”

“Theodore? It’s really time for you to leave. Quietly.”

Theodore had got incredibly adept at reading my moods. He got up immediately. “Of course. Am I fired again?”

I sighed. “Not yet. Just stay out of my way for a few days.”

“Will do, Boss.” He walked towards the door.

“Thanks,” I said in a low voice just before he slipped out of the office. The only sign that he had heard me was his nod. He didn’t even turn to look at me. The next day I decided that the best way to ensure that Theodore stayed out of my way for a few days was for him and Tamara to go to Cleveland on their own.

     

On Monday, I had a lighter workload because I'd planned to be in Cleveland and now I wasn’t. I spent some of that time thinking. I knew I'd been avoiding Justin. Even the increased amount of sleeping I'd been doing was just a different form of avoidance. My absence was designed to be part of the punishment, but if I was honest, a lot of it was simply trying to stay away from him. In part, it was because I was still angry and I knew he would hate seeing so little of me. Another part was that I simply wasn’t ready to go back to normal. If we went back to our easy-going relationship, the way it had been when he was in New York, it would only start making me feel secure again. And then it would be so much worse when it all blew up. I didn’t want to get caught off-guard again.

Then there was also the atmosphere between us. We were still tiptoeing around each other. We only talked about unimportant stuff. Our conversations had become an increasingly desperate attempt to fill the silences. When we'd lived together before, Justin had often backed away from confrontations because he was worried that I might blow up and storm out. When he was in New York, he'd always stuck to his guns and so had I. We had some epic shouting matches at his apartment and the make-up sex was always particularly hot. Now, we were both backing away as soon as anything even remotely discussion-worthy came up. Hell, even straightforward things, like what we would have for dinner, caused Justin to assure me that he really didn’t mind. But the simple truth was, that I was there so rarely that we never had occasion for discussions about dinner, never mind about anything else.

At five o’clock I decided to go home.

Justin was sitting at the kitchen counter, doing the Sudoku from the Sunday paper. He looked so bewildered to see me, it made me smirk.

“Hey,” he then said with a smile. “You’re home early.”

“You too.” I had half expected him to still be at Britin or anywhere else he might spent his days. I had been really careful not to ask.

“Not really. Actually, I’m a little _late_. I usually come home early because the piece that I’m doing at the moment needs natural light. So I can’t do anything when it starts getting dark. I’m always home by about four. But today I started on the mural in Gus’s room. Just the background for now and... do you want something to eat?” He was chattering aimlessly again.

By then, I had left my briefcase on my desk and had placed my coat and my suit jacket neatly on the chair next to him. I nodded, smiling at him. “Yeah, you.”

He grinned. “Now we’re talking!“ He pulled me down by my tie and kissed me. “And where do you want me?” This was always easy, in fact, it was the only thing left that was easy between us.

“Here’s good. Get naked.”

I pulled lube and a condom out of my pants pocket and made sure the pants of my Prada suit were folded nicely over the other chair. Justin eyed the supplies and I knew he made the connection. I was willing him to bring it up, but he just smiled and kissed me again and then I fucked him hard against the counter. I loved this position because it gave me total control. Justin had to put both his hands around the edge of the counter to prevent himself from being slammed into it by my thrusts. I took my time and he didn’t seem to mind, moaning and encouraging me all the way through until we both came.

I withdrew slowly and turned him around, checking for marks on his hips first before kissing him languidly. “Shower with me?”

He nodded and smiled.

Later, we sat at the counter, waiting for our food to be delivered, and he picked up the condom wrapper I'd dropped on the floor and forgotten to pick up. “New brand?” he asked.

I shook my head. After the fuck and a blowjob in the shower, I felt almost too mellow to do this. But I wasn’t going to waste the first sign that he was even paying attention to what I was doing when I wasn’t home. “I’ve been using them for a few weeks.”

“ _I’ve_ never seen them,” he said lightly and flicked the wrapper to the other side of the counter, near the trash.

“Yeah, not the quality stuff I usually use on you.” ‘ _Come on, Justin, make the connection! You’ve been wondering all this time whether I was tricking. Now you know. Say something. It must sting.’_

He had picked up his Sudoku again. “I know that the tricks aren’t likely to complain, but doesn’t it bother you? I mean, you're usually all for quality. And the things go on _your_ dick after all.”

That was it? I threw my tricking in his face and he wanted to discuss my opinion on the quality of condoms? Maybe I should up the stakes. “Well, I buy these in bulk.”

He finally looked up. “Really? How many have you bought since I came home?”

“Bought? Five hundred. Only used fifty so far.” Making it clear that I fully intended to use the rest of them as well.

“Fifty?” He snorted. “You fucked fifty guys since I got back? With your workload and fucking me as well? Very impressive.”

I shrugged, more than a little disconcerted by his amused attitude. “You didn’t know?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible.

“Oh, I knew alright. Like I told you before, it always gets back to me somehow. I sit in the diner and some guy in the next booth makes sure that I can hear him talk about how you fucked him. Sometimes they even come up to me and tell me how great it was and how lucky I am. And I just assumed that you trick on business trips, too.”

“More than here,” I said automatically. Why the hell was he so unconcerned? It had to be one of his ploys to make me believe that he didn't care, but sometimes he was one hell of an actor. “Why are you smiling?”

“I think it’s sweet.”

 _What. The. Fuck?!_ Well, cue in the creepy music. I had to have taken a wrong turn somewhere and had landed in the Twilight Zone.

“Sweet?”

He looked at me and smiled wider. “Well, the way I look at it, you only trick to get back at me. I've hurt you and I’m sorry about that. Now you're punishing me and I said I’d understand. But really, all it means is that you're showing me how much you love me every time you trick.”

 _What?!_ “How the fuck did you work that one out?”

“Look at it this way: you trick to hurt me, which means that every time you stick your dick in some guy it’s all about me. It’s me you’re thinking of, me you’re sending a message to. Even disregarding the fact that I couldn’t have hurt you in the first place if you didn’t love me... Deep down? Every time you fuck a trick? _Biiig_ ‘I love Justin’.” He grinned at me impishly.

It was lucky for me that the delivery guy arrived at that moment, because it was one of the few moments in my life when I was genuinely speechless for an extended period of time. Justin went to get the food and all I could do was put my shoes on and grab my jacket. He was still in the process of paying, when I brushed past them and down the stairs, throwing a, “Don’t wait up,” over my shoulder.

“Brian,” he called gently, but I ignored him. I really had to get out of there.

It was still so early that the crowd at Woody’s was actual using it for its original purpose as a drinking establishment. People tended to pop in for a drink after work during the week. Only later at night would the hook-up potential take precedence over the alcohol. Or not, in some cases.

Still, after I'd sat at the bar for half an hour, a guy sat next to me and asked if he could buy me a drink. I looked him up and down and he was hot enough, good body, nice ass, pretty package. I felt tempted to ask him if he knew that he had ‘Brian Kinney loves Justin Taylor’ stamped on his ass, but I could only imagine the gossip tomorrow if I did _that_ , so I just shook my head tiredly and turned back to my drink.

I proceeded to get very drunk. Everything felt so utterly depressing. Justin had been home for six weeks and nothing was right. We lived together. We fucked two, three times a day and yet we lived completely separate lives. I worked like mad and I had no clue what he did all day. We might as well have been strangers living in the same house. Fuck buddies.

And now he had managed to spoil the only outlet I had for this whole sorry mess. How could I carry on tricking after what he had said? It had always been the one thing that made me feel better, that boosted my self-esteem, assuaged my anger, made me forget. Now I would think of Justin every time I fucked some random guy. I hated him for that.

But as the evening wore on, I had an epiphany. I was always thinking about Justin anyway! From the time he'd moved in with me the very first time, he had always been at the back of my mind. Sometimes it was: ‘ _This is what men do and he will have to learn that._ ’ Other times it was: ‘ _This has nothing to do with Justin. He understands that._ ’ Or there was: ‘ _Why can’t he just accept it?_ ’ Or recently: ‘ _See how_ he _likes it._ ’ And why had I never noticed that before? Probably for the same reason I didn’t notice a lot of things: I was emotionally challenged and needed some kid – well, man now – to point things out to me. Preferably with big neon signs.

But it was far worse than that. I was thinking about Justin _all_ the time. The less we were together, the more my mind focused on him. I was practically obsessed. It wasn’t even that I was wondering what he was up to – though there was that as well – it was more that I was wondering what he was thinking, or _feeling,_ if you liked.  Jeez, I had turned into a fifteen-year-old girl! But I couldn’t help it. What I really wanted to know, _needed_ to know, was this: how far did he have his foot out the door already?

I knew this had to stop. It was worse than when we were broken up. At least then, I had nothing to worry about; the worst had already happened and it was just a matter of surviving it. Now, I had him here, I should be happy and I should certainly not be behaving in a way that made certain that he would leave again. Or maybe that would be the simplest solution. Make him leave and be done. But then I remembered how fucking painful it was whenever he wasn’t in my life, less worrisome, sure, but excruciatingly painful. This really had to stop.

I knew Justin was desperately unhappy. I had made sure of that. But in the process, I was creating precisely what I had always tried to avoid, a replication of a breeder marriage from hell. Unlike Justin, my childhood had prepared me for living in an atmosphere of non-communication, careful avoidance, emotional absence and the fear that one wrong word or step would have dire consequences. It was crushing Justin and that was what I'd planned, but did I really want to live like that, be that person, be my dad, minus the physical violence? The truth was that what was designed to punish Justin was killing me as well.

By that time, I was so drunk that I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to go home. I might say something that I would live to regret. Where did that leave me? I couldn’t go to Michael’s. Ben wouldn’t thank me for that and what would I actually say: ‘ _Mikey, Justin’s found a way to put me off tricking, what should I do?_ ’ Jeez, wouldn’t that be embarrassing? I wasn’t quite drunk enough for that. But I hated sleeping at the office. Cynthia always looked at me so pityingly in the mornings. A hotel? They probably wouldn’t even let me in, the way I was dressed, in a wife beater and jeans, not to mention my level of intoxication. So the solution was simple: if I was too drunk for Justin or a hotel, I would just have to get even more drunk, so that I could bring myself to go to Michael’s after all.

 

The next morning, I awoke to someone shaking me by the shoulder and the smell of coffee. I peered up to see Hunter grinning down at me. There was a steaming mug on the table as well.

“Rough night?” he smirked.

I tried to stretch and groaned. Mikey’s couch really wasn’t all that comfortable. I could feel every bone in my body.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed, like any self-respecting teenager would be at this time of day?” I groused, heaving myself into a sitting position.

“Michael asked me to wake you before I leave. And I’m twenty-five, dude.”

“Ah, yes, you’re the perpetual student.”

“I’ll have you know that I'll be finished next summer and then I’ll be the most awesomest teacher ever.”

“Just as well you won’t be teaching English then.”

He just laughed and disappeared into the kitchen. Hunter was all right, well, apart from changing his major three times, still speaking like a teenager in his twenties and showing no signs of ever moving out of his parents’ house. But when you'd been living on the streets for a few years, maybe living on your own was overrated.

I gulped down the coffee as soon as it was at a drinkable temperature and left before Ben and Michael even got up. At the diner, I got some breakfast to go and then went to Kinnetik to shower and change and attempt to appear not hung-over all morning. That, at least, I could always pull off with aplomb.

 

When I arrived at the loft that evening, Justin was just standing in the middle of the room. It was unclear what he might have been doing. I thought it entirely possible that he'd been pacing. He did that when he was nervous. His eyes searched my face and he smiled wanly.

“Hey,” I said and gave him slight smirk.

His face lit up into a ‘sunshine’ smile. It was a stupid nickname for a grown man, good only for mocking as far as I was concerned, but it was apt sometimes. He rushed over and practically jumped into my embrace, squeezing his arms around my neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. It was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

I moved back a bit, so I could look at him. “Yeah, you did,” I said, but gently.

“I didn’t. It’s just something I keep telling myself. I have to tell myself that to get through this. Because I hate it. So I tell myself that this is what it means.”

“And how is that working out for you?” I was still amused.

He huffed a laugh. “Not so good. Usually it doesn’t come over as ‘I love you, Justin’, more like ’Fuck you, Justin’.”

“Well, I could supply the ‘fucking you’ part, if you like.”

Justin could go from nothing to extremely horny in about five seconds flat. I always liked that about him. He was kissing me passionately, while his hands started to divest me of my clothes. Then we separated a little to make undressing easier. I pulled his shirt over his head and kissed down his chest until I eventually dropped to my knees to run my tongue over his stomach, while I opened and pulled down his pants. I inhaled deeply, with my nose buried in his pubic hair.

His hands were in my hair and he was moaning my name. Then he tugged a little and when I looked up, he dropped to his knees as well. “I want you inside me.”

“I think I can arrange that,” I grinned and while he lay back on the floor, I put on a condom from my pocket and squirted lube on my fingers. Justin never required much preparation when he was like this. It was more a matter of applying lubrication than opening him up, and he wasn’t the most patient person, either.

“Com’ on,” he urged. “Hurry up.”

I laid my body over his, kissing him, and then I flipped us over in a practiced move. He smiled down at me and lifted up onto his knees so he could lower himself onto me. And then I was inside him and that was always... so... fucking... _good!_ I could hear myself grunt and as I was thrusting up into him, he lowered his head to kiss me. We never stopped kissing until he groaned his relief into my mouth and I thrust half a dozen more times until I felt the white-hot flash of my own climax.

When he pulled himself up so as not to crush me on the hardwood floor and to let me pull out gently, I could see him smile. He rolled off to lie beside me.

“What?” I asked, smiling myself.

He opened his mouth, then changed his mind and shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Just say it. You know you want to.”

He was searching my eyes, wondering if it was safe and I realized that I really hated that he had gotten so cautious again. Then he nodded, maybe he was thinking along the same lines. He took a deep breath. “I was thinking that this time I got the ‘fuck Justin’ and the ‘I love Justin’ at the same time.”

I kissed his nose before I jumped up and tied off the condom. “You always do.” Now he was beaming, as he took my hand to help him up.

Later, after a shower and some food, we were watching a weird documentary about some guy blowing up disused chimney stacks in densely populated areas, when I took the remote control and switched it off.

He was sitting in between my legs on the couch and snuggled closer against me, not quite turning around yet. “Is this your way of saying you want to fuck me again?”

I snorted. “And people say _I’m_ obsessed with sex. No, this is my way of saying I don’t want to watch this shit. And maybe... we should talk... about one or two things.”

He tensed a little, because that was a sentence that came out of my mouth only on the rarest of occasions. “Uhm, what about?” His voice was wary.

“Not sure. You’re better at this. You decide.”

“What? How's that fair? You wanna talk and I have to start?” he laughed.

“Justin.”

He stopped laughing and finally nodded a few times. Then there was a long silence, while his finger drew pretty pictures on my bare forearm, which was wrapped around him. These situations had always troubled me in the past, because they gave Justin leave to say things and to ask questions and to demand from me. I'd always panicked at the thought of being unable to deliver. But this time? I was more worried that he would _not_ say, ask and demand, because if _he_ had no ideas on how to fix this, then it might be beyond repair. I was fresh out.

Some things would never change. Justin being a brave little fucker was definitely one of them. However careful he'd become around me over the last few weeks, when given an opportunity, he seized it with both hands.

“The tricking is killing me.”

I snorted a laugh. “Well, go straight for the jugular, why don’t you?”

He chuckled as well. And then he just waited for me.

“What do you suggest? Because last time this didn’t work out so well for us, Justin.”

“I’ve always wanted you all to myself. You know that, right?” I nodded. “I never thought I would have it, though. And that was okay. You've always tricked, so it makes you you. And I know it doesn’t mean anything. And I accept that, but there's this part of me that would like to be enough for you. Because if it doesn’t mean anything, why bother? I hate the way guys look at me as if I’m the little woman, whose husband‘s cheating on her, because you fucked them the night before. But even more than that, I hate to share you. I don’t think I can get past it. I’ve...”

“Justin, get up!”

“What?” He seemed confused, but finally he moved forward a bit until I managed to slip out from behind him. I stalked away from him, over to the window and then turned to look at him. I could breathe over here, I couldn’t when I was that close to him. The unexpected desire to shove or hit him had taken my breath away. I was livid.

“Have you lost your mind? Or just your memory? _I_ didn’t fuck it up! _You_ did! You might not wanna share me, but you sure as hell wanted to spread yourself around. You don’t like the way guys look at you? Do you think I liked the grin on Caspar’s face? And that _did_ mean something. You went off and played happy families with him for three weeks, remember? So what the fuck are you talking about? Don’t fucking pin this on _me_.”

He looked crestfallen. Had he really forgotten all about that little episode? “I know, Brian. I fucked up. I’m sorry,” he said unhappily.

“You keep saying that! Okay, you fucked up. And you’re sorry. I get it. I want to know _why._ Why did you fuck up, when it allegedly was what you always wanted? Why did you fall off the wagon when I didn’t? Why for fuck’s sake did you not pick some random guy? And most of all, why was it easier to kick _me_ to the curb afterwards, instead of _him_?” My voice was loud and angry, but I held back from shouting because, for once, I needed answers.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at me. “I don’t know why I did it and that’s the God’s honest truth. I’ve been raking my brain and the best thing I can come up with is that maybe three weeks was too long? I wasn’t really expecting you to go through with it, either. It was such a long time. Three weeks.”

“Justin, you fucked the guy, what, an hour before I got there? It makes no fucking sense.”

“I _know_. I can’t explain it. He was so persistent and I was tempted before. When you turned up that weekend you were supposed to be in Toronto... that was a close shave, too. I was so relieved when I saw you standing there. And then when it happened, I thought to myself: well, I’ve been waiting for you to stop tricking for so long and if I fucked Cas when you were giving me that, then Cas must mean something. I felt that I must have more feelings for him than I realized, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been tempted, right? If I jeopardized the one thing I always wanted for _him_ , then he must be what I really wanted.”

I stared at him. “You’re cracked, Justin. You went with him, because you _thought_ that was how it _should_ be? Who decides how it should be, if not you? What happened to what you want? To love? You’re always so big on that, aren’t you? Did you love him?”

“ _No._ I didn’t. That’s the weird bit. He was my friend, but I didn't love him at all. He wasn’t even that hot anymore. If we hadn’t stopped tricking by then, I would have told him to fuck off without a second thought. It was just that.. if he could make me throw everything away for a fuck... it couldn’t be just a fuck, right? It had to be more... And then it wasn’t. It was less... It was nothing at all.”

I shook my head and turned to look out the window. Some part of me could understand some of it. So he thought there must be more to it because he'd given up the one thing he always wanted for it. Made sense. Kind of. It was what happened to people who analyzed their feelings all the time. Selfish assholes like me always knew what they wanted. Usually didn’t care who got hurt in the process, either. Well, at least my way made sense to me.

I felt his arms snake around my chest, loosely, in case I wasn’t ready for it. How could a guy who could read me so well, not have a clue about his own feelings?

“Maybe you’re just not ready, Justin.”

“I _am_. And now that I’m back there'll be no problem, will there? Or have you changed your mind?”

“I have no problem giving up the tricks, not anymore. But I’m not doing it if you’re not pulling along with me. That would be pretty pointless. And I don’t want either one of us to sneak around behind the other one’s back. If we do this, if you think you can do this, I want complete honesty. You have doubts, you tell me. You feel tempted, you tell me. And do I need to mention that if you fall off the wagon again, you _definitely_ tell me?”

He came around to look into my face. “Are you sure you want to try this again? For me? Because I would understand if you didn’t. I’ve let you down. It won’t happen again, but how can you trust me?”

“Are you trying to talk me out of it again already? I’m game if you are. And I’m not doing it just for you. And another thing, Justin?”

“Hhm?”

“I want your ass on demand, anytime I want, anywhere I want.”

He grinned at me. “And that’s different from now, how exactly? ... I promise: anytime, anywhere, anyhow.” That last bit came out in a very husky, sexy voice and he did that looking up at me through his eyelashes thing that always got me going.

He was as good as his word, too.

 

On Thursday, Justin went Christmas shopping with Daphne. Personally, I thought that anybody who went Christmas shopping the day before Christmas Eve needed their head examined. Ah well, not my problem. Michael and I met at Woody’s, then relocated to the loft pretty quickly because we wanted to get stoned. Much more comfortable doing that at home.

“So let me get this straight,” Michael was saying, “he dumped you because he fucked his friend and then thought that meant he liked his friend more than you?”

I nodded sagely. Maybe if I smoked a bit more, it would make sense, finally.

We were sitting next to each other on the sofa, slumped down very low with our feet up on the coffee table. Mikey was munching on some potato chips. He had a big bag across his lap and seemed hell-bent on not spending a single moment without food in his mouth. He always got really peckish when we were smoking up.

“What is he? Feeble in the head?”

I turned to give him a look. Even faint references to that night freaked me out still. He was crunching his chips for a while before he noticed it. Then he looked at me and frowned. And then it clicked. “Jeez, Brian, you know I didn’t mean it like that.”

Yeah, I knew. Michael and Justin got on well and even liked each other. But deep down, when it came to me, they would never see eye to eye. At first, it had been jealousy, on both sides, but nowadays it was more about how Michael resented him when he thought Justin was hurting me. And Justin resented that Mikey knew practically everything about me still. Well, they just had to live with it, because I wasn’t giving either one of them up and to be fair, neither of them asked me to. After all, I didn't ask Mikey to give up Ben, or Justin to stop hanging out with Daphne, who, I had no doubt, knew every last detail of our relationship.

I nodded, looked back up at the ceiling and took another toke before passing it to him.

“I don’t get it,” he carried on.

“He fell off the wagon, Mikey. He’s twenty-seven. At that age, I got the heebie-jeebies if someone even mentioned the word monogamy within fifty feet of me.”

“He’s not you, Brian. He’s more like me. I would have been happy to settle down with right guy at his age, even younger. He’s always wanted this.”

I didn't want to get into a discussion about how much Justin was _not_ like Michael. It wasn’t the point. “Maybe he just _thought_ that’s what he wanted. You know, careful what you wish for and all that. Or maybe... he just doesn’t want it with me.”

Michael snorted and then laughed outright. “Brian, believe me, whatever it is that he wants, he wants it with you, only you and always you.”

And that was why Michael had been my friend for so long: he always made me feel better.

“So, do you think he’ll do it this time?”

I shrugged. “We’ll see. Let’s see if _I_ can do it, first.”

“Oh, you’ll manage all right. Flying colors and all that; because you always do what you say you’ll do.”

I put my hand on his neck and squeezed in silent thanks. Then I stole one of his chips.


	6. Chapter 6

 

**PART SIX**

Things were a bit up in the air after that. There was Christmas and New Year. The munchers were down with the kids for ten days – now all happily reunited, just as predicted. Justin and I had decided to move to Britin permanently. Kinnetik was as busy as ever. There was just a lot to do.

The move went smoothly. Justin’s stuff was already at the house and I bought more stuff new than I took from the loft. We had decided to keep both places. We were usually at Babylon one day out of the weekend and it was just easier to crash in Pittsburgh on those nights. Britin was now fully furnished and all I had to do was set up my office there. The move was so gradual – with moving stuff out there bit by bit and staying overnight there and at the loft, whichever was more convenient – that it took me by surprise, when, one day, I realized we were actually living at Britin full-time. So, no, I didn’t carry him over the threshold.

Kinnetik had hired a new account executive, Nicholas Parcell, from one of the bigger New York agencies and wasn’t I gloating for a month that our reputation was now good enough that people were _leaving_ the big apple for us! He was good, too. It took me a few weeks to show him the ropes, but by February he was up to speed and my work load dropped noticeably. It was a relief, especially since the drive to and from work now took an extra hour.

Justin was taking classes at PIFA again, although it was only two days a week for now. He wanted to get his degree but not be a full-time student. He'd worked out that this way it would take him three years until he would be done. Despite having been suspended before and then leaving again very shortly after his return, the PIFA administration was falling over themselves to accommodate him. They even counted his work in LA as extra credits. An artist who was already showing in New York? Hell yes, they were kissing his ass.

Things were good between us. It seemed that Justin had found his way back to his old self. The awkwardness between us had disappeared and, finally, we were on an even footing again. We were comfortable together. We talked, we went out, we spent time at home, we fucked. Boy, did we fuck! It wasn't only more frequent, it was more prolonged as well.

And imaginative.

One day in February, I was sitting in the diner, having lunch with Nicholas – who was straight, by the way, but held his own in a gay environment admirably – when Justin walked in. He looked straight at me without expression or acknowledgement, then sat down at the counter and ordered something from Kiki. I thought for a minute that he didn’t want to disturb us, in case it was a business lunch, and was just about to call him over to introduce him, when he looked over his shoulder to give me a very deliberate once-over. His eyes wandered slowly over my body and then briefly to my face, making eye contact. No smile yet.

I licked my lips and tried to listen to what Nicholas was saying. Justin was cruising me with a vengeance. There were a couple more looks over his shoulder until he half turned in the high chair, leaning back slightly so I could see his body to its full advantage. Now he was looking at me full-on and his hand stroked just once over his crotch. I was rock hard.

Finally, he locked eyes with me and gave the barest of nods towards the restroom. A moment later, he made his way there, wiggling his ass as he walked past our booth. I excused myself and followed.

When I opened the restroom door, he pulled me further inside by my tie and pushed me forcefully against the wall. I opened my mouth to say something, but he put his hand on my lips. “I don’t need your name or your life story, buddy. I don’t’ want your number either. What I do want is for you to fuck the shit out of me. Do you think you can do that?”

I pulled his hand from my mouth and grinned. “Sure.” With that, I pulled him into one of the stalls and locked it. When I bent down to kiss him, he put his hand up again.

“I don’t kiss.”

I smirked and turned him against the wall, undoing his pants with one hand, while the other undid my own. He pulled a condom out of his pocket before his pants dropped to his knees and handed it to me over his shoulder. Then he braced himself on his forearms. He had lubed himself plenty and it was heaven to sink into him.

Fucking Justin in a restroom stall had never felt quite so dirty and hot. We grunted and moaned. He jerked himself a couple of times before he came and I was relieved that I could follow suit because I wouldn’t have lasted much longer. For a few moments, our sweat-soaked bodies stayed pressed together, then I pulled out and, after giving himself a very quick clean-up with some tissue, he pulled his pants back up and left the stall.

I discarded the condom and then we were washing our hands side by side, pretending we didn’t know each other. This was such a familiar scene to me and yet completely different and exciting. He left without a word. By the time I returned to my seat, Justin was nowhere to be seen. Nicholas had no idea what had happened and we just carried on with the conversation.

When I got home that evening, Justin greeted me in the hallway.

“Did anything interesting today?” he asked with a suppressed smirk.

“Now that you mention it, there was this guy in the diner. He was really hot.”

“Really? What did you do?”

“Fucked him in the restroom.”

“Really? What was he like?”

“A lot like you.”

“That good?”

“Oh, yes.” And then we started kissing and only made it as far as the stairs for our first fuck of the night.

 

So, I certainly wasn’t bored with fucking just him. Business trips were tough, but I had cut them down to a minimum, no more than two short ones a month. Was I ever tempted? Every single fucking time I saw a hot guy – and they all seemed hot all of a sudden. I looked. Sometimes I flirted. I got a huge amount of come-ons – nothing new there. But it seemed enough to know that I could have a guy; I didn’t have to actually go through with it. I lost count of the guys I cruised just to see if they were interested. Then I would walk away. Yeah, I had turned into a big cock-tease. Didn’t care much either. It gave me the boost I was accustomed to, while keeping me on track.

I never lost sight of what I really wanted. When I started out as a teenager, Vic was already sick. He constantly warned Michael and me about unsafe sex. My gym teacher, who was my first sexual partner in most ways, was also the teacher for sex education at our school. I had never in my life, in thousands of fucks, had sex without a condom, not once. I _wanted_ it. And I wanted it with Justin.

I knew that Justin was in the same situation. From the very beginning, I had made it clear to him that condoms were an absolute must. I knew he would have risked it for me at some stage, but after Ben got sick and was in hospital and Hunter turned out to be positive and then Vic died, he was almost as paranoid about it as I was. And he wasn’t with the fiddler long enough to clear the required six months safety period, so no bare-backing with him either. We were going to have a true first together.

Of course, I suspected that the difference would be more noticeable for me than for him. His dick was usually bare anyway and whether he would be able to feel that much of a difference inside him, when I fucked him without a condom, was debatable. From my bottoming experience, I would have said, rather not. Yes, I bottomed occasionally. I was a fag and had a prostate, it worked for me. But in general, I didn’t enjoy it as much. Other than the actual climax, it made me slightly uncomfortable during the build-up. Not that Justin wasn’t any good at it, he was, and when he expressed a desire to top, I accommodated him, if not straight away, then usually within a couple of days. But it wasn’t how sex worked with us and even Justin admitted that, while the fantasy turned him on no end, the execution was not quite as exciting as he imagined it. So we did this maybe a dozen times a year, if that , and that was enough for both of us.

It was no reflection on our relationship. Being the bottom during a fuck said nothing about the power relations between a couple. Michael and Ben were the perfect example for that. While Justin could be versatile, Michael was a total bottom. He had only topped a handful of times in his life and he didn't like it. He told me that he'd never topped Ben and while I wondered how Ben felt about that – remembering how he had enjoyed getting fucked while he was tied up – I knew that Michael preferred it this way. That didn’t mean, however, that Ben was in charge the rest of the time. Because he wasn’t. That was Michael. It didn't always appear like that to other people, but it was true. Because Ben loved Michael more. I suspected he even thought that was a good thing because it would make it easier for Michael when he was gone. I had my doubts on that score.

 

When we were halfway through our six month period, things started to change again. Or maybe it had started before that and I just hadn’t noticed. I was busier than I had ever been, with thrashing out the summer campaigns for most customers now, so maybe I was pre-occupied a lot of times, even when I was with Justin. He'd found out that even the two classes he was taking required a lot more time than he'd anticipated. And that was on top of his painting, which he was doing in preparation for a show in Chicago in the autumn. Furthermore, Daphne had relocated to Detroit for six months to work in the Neuroscience department of the Henry Ford Hospital.

Just like Michael for me, Daphne had always been Justin’s sounding board for his doubts, his insecurities and his frustrations. She could be relied upon to put things into perspective and to support him. The general rule was that if Daphne lived in the same town as him, things would not go awry – or not as awry as they did without her. So, yeah, it was really all Daphne’s fault for wanting a career in medicine.

Justin went to PIFA on Tuesdays and Wednesday mornings. On Wednesday afternoons, he'd joined a study group, though what the hell he needed it for was beyond me. With his SAT scores, Art History was a doddle. I suspected it was more to fit in and make friends. Three years was a long time to be at a school without any friends. I was all for it. If things got out of hand, like they had at St James, it would be good to have some support. He laughed at that and reminded me that the ‘A’ in PIFA stood for ‘Arts’ and hence the school was full of fags anyway.

I came to the loft one Wednesday afternoon to pick up some files I had left there, to find a group of kids placed around the dining table. They all stared at me silently when I walked in. I hadn’t even known that the study group would be held at our place.

“Hey,” Justin said, unconcerned.

“Hey,” I said and walked over, just to be polite.

Justin put his head back and I briefly kissed him upside down before he started introducing everyone. There was a girl called Fiona, who had strange hair. Green, blue _and_ purple? Commitment issues much? The other girl seemed rather shy and waif-like. Her name was Vera. Then there was a guy with red hair, Parker, who had way too many ‘I’m so poor’ holes in his sweater for it not to look contrived. He seemed the ‘let’s chill, dude’ kind of guy. He would have gotten on well with Hunter. And then there was Finn. Tall, dark and smoking hot. He looked from Justin to me and back, as they all did, but he seemed a little perturbed.

“This is Brian,” Justin said. No explanation who I was to him. Neither one of us did that in a private setting. Let people work it out for themselves. With the kissing, it was pretty obvious, I would have guessed.

When I left, I had the feeling that I hadn’t done Justin any favors. The kids at the table were all in their late teens or early twenties. They were already in awe of him to some extent, due to his success. He was also almost a decade older, though he could still pass for one of the older ones. I couldn’t. I looked hot, but I had never been much of a twink, even when I was that age. My looks spoke of experience and, in my immaculate suit, of sophistication. I was a world removed from the student artist types. If Justin was looking for some real friends, meeting me had just made them all aware of how much _not_ like them he was. Ah well, it was what it was. I wasn’t hiding from anyone or for anyone, not even for Justin. And I suspected that in Finn’s case, becoming aware of how far removed from them Justin was, was a good thing.

They had crept up in Justin’s conversations for a while and, now that I'd met them, I became more aware of it. And of how much time he was spending with them, especially Finn. He had even been out to the house to see Justin’s studio. It all felt very familiar. Was I worried? Not really. When I was younger, I'd always maintained that I didn’t do jealous because, then, of course, I was ‘not in a relationship’ and now I trusted Justin. Yeah, I was so full of shit! Then, I'd been jealous as hell, of Ian and even of Michael at some point, and now... Justin had already proved last year that I couldn’t trust him.

He was pulling away from me again, too. Being withdrawn but not really, sad but not really, nervous but not really. Actually, yes, he was definitely edgy. At other times, he would almost interrogate me about how I spent my time and with whom. It was as if _he_ didn’t trust _me._ A lot of nights I would wake up to find myself alone in bed. After I'd traced him to his studio a few times, I left him to it. We had an unspoken agreement not to interfere with each other’s work. I just didn’t think it was healthy. Michael told me to talk to him, but I couldn’t. Justin would be angry or upset that I was suspicious. He would go back to being apologetic and timid and I didn’t want that. So I just fucked him a lot, saying ‘fuck you for making me feel this way’ and ‘I love you, don’t do this to me again’ at the same time. I didn’t know if he heard me. I could no longer tell.

 

One Wednesday afternoon near the end of  April, Ted came rushing into my office. He was twenty minutes early for a finance meeting we'd scheduled as the last order of the day.

“Brian, I need to go,” he said without preamble.

“What’s up?”

“Blake had an accident at work. He’s being driven to the hospital. They think he broke his arm.”

“Do you want me to drive you?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. I’d just like to be there.”

“No problem. We can do this some other time. Tomorrow, if you’re back by then.”

“I should be. Thanks, Boss.”

Finding myself with time on my hands, I decided to go home half an hour later. The first thing I saw when I pushed the loft door open, was Justin and Finn, standing very close together in the middle of the loft. Having heard me coming, Justin was already in the process of pushing Finn away. Finn wasn't quite so quick off the mark or maybe he didn’t want to be. He still had his hand in Justin’s pants.

I pushed the door open wide and left it open because Finn was leaving, whether either one of them liked it or not. He had the decency to do so without a word or even a look in my direction. Then I closed the door and stood leaning against it, looking at Justin, who'd done up his pants and was biting his lips nervously.

“If you say that you fucked up and you’re sorry, you can follow him out,” I said warningly, “because that is getting old.”

He lowered his eyes. “Nothing happened.”

“Yet.”

He acknowledged the truth of that with a silent nod. I was hit suddenly by the fact that, if I hadn’t come home earlier than usual, something _would_ have happened. Or if I'd gone to the house instead of coming to pick him up first, I would never have known.

“Brian,” he started and then stopped because, after all, what could he _possibly_ say?

“Don’t say a word,” I hissed anyway. “Get your stuff if you wanna go home with me.”

I watched him as he silently got his study books together and picked up his jacket. When he got to where I was still standing by the door, I said quietly: “If I ever see that guy either here or at the house again, you can pack your bags. Do I make myself clear?” He nodded silently and slunk out the door.

We didn’t speak for more than two weeks. Justin tried to initiate conversations two or three times a day, to test the waters, but I shot him down every single time. Usually, I got up and left the room. We were rarely in the same room anyway. When we were at the house, I was in my office or the den. He was mainly in his studio. We slept in the same bed still and after a couple of days, we even fucked every night and every morning. But it was like fucking a trick, it got the job done, but there were no words and no kisses and barely a caress, at least on my side.

I was livid. I was confused. I was hurt. After a few days, I remembered that I _always_ went to the loft on Wednesdays to pick Justin up. There was no way that I wouldn’t have noticed what was going on, even if I hadn’t been early. Only then, it would have been a fuck instead of just a grope and I would have caught them either in the middle of it or afterwards. And Justin knew this. He _had_ to know this. It was Caspar fucking Richardson all over again. Justin wasn’t stupid. He had to have known that he would get caught – both times. Which left only one conclusion: he had _wanted_ to get caught.

It made no more sense to me now, than it had last year.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that, while I could maybe get my head around his thinking where the break-up was concerned, he never actually explained why he fucked the ghost in the first place. Three weeks was too long? Okay, that would have made sense if he fucked him halfway through that period but on the last day? It would have been easier to just jerk off before I got there.

All I could come up with was that he wasn’t as ready for monogamy as he said he was. I didn’t blame him for that. Like I'd said to Michael, at his age I was nowhere near ready. But why didn’t he just say so? We would go back to tricking, even discreetly if that was important to him, and that would be that. We would put it off until he was ready. Not a problem. It would save me from having to hold back every time I saw a hot guy. Barebacking could wait. It wasn’t as if I'd go off and find someone else if Justin didn’t give me that. He _had_ to know that.

Of course, if he was shooting for me being monogamous while he still tricked behind my back, he had another thing coming. When we started out, I'd often wondered if Justin was a little unhinged. His insistence on us being together in the face of all things pointing the other way, had smacked of obsession. Naturally, he had proved me wrong over the years. But if he thought he could still trick while I didn’t, he was downright delusional. That would never happen. Not even for Justin. Not ever.

But, at least, this whole mess gave me an appreciation of one issue Justin had to put up with from the beginning: it was fucking painful to realize that I just wasn’t enough for him. That was one realization I never had to deal with before. I really could have done without that. 

 

On the third Saturday after the incident, I heard him knock on my door, as I was pretending to work in my home office. I was leaning back in my very comfortable and very expensive leather chair, with my feet up on my desk, getting steadily drunk on JB. I ignored him. That usually made him go away, but this time he just came in. Damn, would I ever remember to lock my fucking doors?

“If you don’t talk to me now, I will pack my bags and leave,” he said in a steady voice. “I really don’t want to, but I can’t live like this. Say whatever you want to say to me. Yell. Rant. Curse. Shout. I don’t mind. I deserve it. But you will have to say _some_ thing.”

“I’m surprised you're not all packed already. That’s your usual MO, isn’t it?” I mocked.

I saw him sag with relief. It was the most I'd said to him since that Wednesday. I hadn’t meant it to be encouraging, but to his demented brain, somehow, it was. Or maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t gotten up and walked out yet. I blamed the alcohol for that.

He pulled up the visitors’ chair to the side of the desk and sat down. “I saw Alex Wilder yesterday.”

That made me sit up and put my feet on the floor. “You talked about us in _Woody’s_?” Woody’s  was kind of Wilder’s unofficial second office, where he tried to cure all of gay Pittsburgh on the fly... and took payment in trade. Great.

“Actually, I went to his office. I wanted to make sure that there was doctor/patient confidentiality. I had an appointment and everything. Paid him with real American dollars, too. In case you were wondering.”

“Still, you couldn’t find a shrink who doesn’t know me?”

“I went to him precisely _because_ he knows you. And me. Saved a lot of time trying to explain the unexplainable.”

“And did he explain it all to you, Sunshine?” I sing-songed mockingly. I just wished someone would explain it to _me_. Because I had nothing.

“He made some suggestions.”

“I don’t need a shrink, Justin. And I don’t want one.”

“He explained _my_ behavior, Brian. Not yours. I had no trouble with yours. It was myself I couldn’t understand.”

“Yeah, you and me both.”

He sighed. “Could you just listen to what I have to say, please?”

“I thought you wanted me to speak to you?”

He banged his hand on my desk in a rare display of anger. “Shut up! Will you just shut up and listen? I’m trying to explain.”

I made a zipping gesture at my lips and suppressed a smirk. This ought to be good!

“I know you think I’m not ready for monogamy and that that's the whole problem, but it isn’t. I always wanted this, from day one. I resigned myself that it wasn’t going to happen. I genuinely believed that you would never want to do it. And even if you wanted to, that you couldn’t.” He made pacifying gesture when I started to speak. “I know I was wrong, Brian. You proved that you could, twice. No one’s debating that.”

Well, at least he acknowledged that much.

“I was going to talk to you about it last year, but then you suggested it yourself. I was ecstatic. I could come home and I could finally have the relationship I always wanted with you. You were even talking about bare-backing. I hadn’t even thought that far. I was thinking we would try no tricking and one of us would slip up now and again and the condoms would stay in place for a long time. Maybe forever.”

“One of us _did_ slip up now and again.”

He looked at me disapprovingly. Hey, I was only stating the obvious! And I was a little drunk.

“And then you turned into Mr. Perfect! I'd thought we'd start when I got home. But when I asked you that time, you said you were already doing it and I believed you because I know you wouldn’t lie to me about that. Everything was so good between us and I got scared. I thought, if you fuck up now, I would be devastated. So I gave you permission to trick. Especially when there were those three weeks. I was convinced you couldn’t do it and it would hurt like hell. I thought if both of us had fucked up, it would be easier for me. I could cope with my own fuck-up, but not with yours. I was crushed when it turned out I was the only one. You looked so upset. And I had to tell myself that it meant something, to cope with that. To make myself feel not so... so fucking awful.”

“Great! You fuck up and then _I_ have to suffer the consequences because _you_ can’t cope,” I snorted my derision.

He ignored me.

“When we got back together, it was all right. You were tricking and, in a way, I was glad that you were punishing me because I deserved it. I thought it would even things out. I would have coped with it much longer. It hurt like hell, but it was familiar. In a perverted way, I wanted it to last longer, but then you came round and you agreed to try again and I was taken by surprise again. And then we were so close. Everything was great, wonderful, too good to be true even. Then you started to pull away. You were busy, but I wasn’t sure if that was the real reason.”

“We’re _always_ busy in March and April, just like we are in November and December. You know that!”

“I got scared, Brian. I thought you’d changed your mind or you were finding it hard to do. And part of me thought that maybe you were just waiting for the right moment to snatch it all away again. To punish me.”

“You didn’t trust me! I resent that! I've given you no reason for that.”

“I know, but the closer we got to the end, the more scared I got. I would die if you fucked up now... after I started to believe that we could do this. But I also knew that _you_ would be devastated if you fucked up. You'd hate yourself and have one of your guilt trips.”

I got up off my chair and then leaned down to get in his face. “Don’t do me any favors, Justin! Don’t you dare try and make out you were going to fuck that guy because you were sacrificing yourself for me!”

“Of course not. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I couldn’t cope with the idea that you might snatch it all away. I would be crushed. I was scared of that all the time. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate on anything. Just waiting. This thing that I wanted more than anything was dangling in front of me and I just expected it to get taken away at any moment. I was supposed to enjoy being home and all I was doing was worrying the whole time. I was stupid. I should have trusted you. To tell you the truth, I didn’t really do anything deliberately or consciously and I didn’t really understand why I was doing all this stuff until yesterday. Alex explained it to me. It was all more or less subconscious.”

I laughed and stalked away a few steps before turning around. “See! This is why I always say therapy is bullshit. It’s a cop-out! It gives you license to do whatever you want because ‘it’s all subconscious’. Take fucking responsibility for yourself. Subconscious my ass!”

He got up himself to stand in front of me. “And your tricking for years wasn’t?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Your tricking all goes back to unacknowledged fears and insecurities. Well, here’s a newsflash, Brian: I have some of those, too! I’m not proud of it. And I’m sorry I hurt you. But I’ll be damned if I let you get away with making my life a misery forever because I fucked up a few times. It’s not as if expecting you to hurt me deliberately for hurting you was such a far-fetched idea. So I was wrong. I admit that. But it’s done! It’s over! I can’t change it. You can’t change it. I’ve worked it out now and it won't happen again. We move on! Now!”

“You don’ t get to decide that on your own!”

“Yes, I do!” he shouted, in my face now. “Just this once, I decide!”

I nodded distractedly. He was fucking hot when he was angry and breathing hard. Very reminiscent of when he was panting under me during a fuck. I wanted to grab him and fuck the shit out of him, be done with this interminable conversation. We were done, right? I could just throw him on the desk and...

“Were you not scared at all?”

Justin’s soft voice pulled my mind out of the gutter and I, reluctantly, followed; looking up from his mouth, and all the possibilities it conjured up in my mind, to his eyes, which were pleading, yet determined. He was right, of course, if we stopped now, this issue would never get resolved. And it would fester. Things always did between us. I took a deep breath and let my anger drain away with my arousal.

“Scared about what?”

He smiled for the first time at my gentler tone, then got serious again. “About me coming home?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Did it not worry you? We were living apart for five years. And when we saw each other, we were always totally focused  on each other. And on our best behavior. Did you never think that there might be problems? In everyday life? I couldn’t have been the only one worried that we might fuck up... was I the only one?”

Okay, this was apparently one of those times when I had to man up and just get on with it. “I might have had some small doubts.”

His eyebrows went up questioningly. Then he just waited me out.

“Okay, so I was scared shitless. I thought I might fuck up. Or you might not want what I want. Or I might not be able to deliver what you expect of me. Or you might find Pittsburgh boring after New York. Or you might find me boring if you were stuck with me all day.”

“You? Boring? Not a word that springs to mind, really... I was scared, Brian. From the moment we decided that I would come home to this moment right here, I was scared the whole time. We had this fairy tale relationship when I was in New York. You flew in, we fucked a lot, we had fun and then you went home. It was like we were in a bubble, just you and me. And I knew that would change. I wanted that, the everyday stuff, the dry cleaning pick-up, the shopping, the breakfasts together. But I knew I couldn’t cope with the tricking any longer. I’m not a cocky teenager anymore. I used to just take it in my stride. I would get hurt, then I’d bounce back. It’s not that I don’t want to put up with getting hurt anymore – though there is that as well – it’s that I can’t _cope_ with it nowadays. What used to feel like a bee sting, when I was a teenager, now feels more like someone’s ripping my arm off.”

“I did offer to stop tricking, Justin,” I reminded him.

“I know. But I couldn’t work out _why_. That's so not like you. You never offer me things without a fight. I ask for things, you refuse, I insist, we fight, you give in. That’s, like, the natural order of things. This time you just said it before I could even ask. It was bound to blow up in my face. I didn’t think you could do it, especially long-distance. How could I expect you to go from tricking every day, sometimes more than once, to only fucking at the weekends? That was bound to go wrong. And I didn’t want to get hurt. I would understand, but I would still get hurt. I couldn’t cope.”

“I was already down to only one or two tricks a week by then.”

“What? You never told me that! Why didn’t I know that? Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

I shrugged. “It just went down gradually. I was so busy with Kinnetik and flying out to you every weekend. And I don’t think anybody else knew. The gang are rarely at the clubs nowadays. Only Emmett, but he's not there to Kinney-watch exactly, is he? I wasn’t advertising the fact that I can no longer go clubbing every night and be brilliant at my job during the day. I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would. I was just offering you something that was practically a reality already.”

“Oh God.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “I was convinced you wouldn’t be able to do it. Those three weeks in the summer, I was going crazy. All I could think of was how much it would hurt when you came back and told me that you fucked some guy. The closer it got to the Friday you were coming, the worse it got. And in the end, it seemed easier if we both fucked up. Then it would be just ordinary tricking, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t feel guilty and I wouldn’t have my heart ripped out. And then you didn’t fuck up and I felt sick about what I'd done. And, of course, the next weekend we were back to square one. You were tricking the whole week. Emmett told me when you were in the backroom. And you even tricked in front of me. I knew I'd fucked everything up, but I didn’t have the strength to start all over again. So I took the easy way out and Cas was easy. A pain in the ass but easy. And some part of me felt that I didn’t deserve any better than that.”

“Why did you come back?”

“Because there's only ever gonna be you for me, Brian. You are, like, imprinted on my DNA. I thought I might be able to persuade you to take me back, but I knew it wouldn’t be easy even if you did. When I came home and you were tricking all the time and being so...cold, I was almost relieved. It was familiar. No more fairy tale. I knew I had to endure it because you needed to get the hurt out of your system, but I was dying there, Brian. I cannot do that again. I never did that to you. Whenever you fucked up before, I’d call you on it, we’d fight, fuck and things would go back to normal. I cannot take any more weeks of punishment. It has to end here.”

Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure if I could take any more of his punishment, either. “I get it. You were scared. I can relate. What about Finn, though? I thought we were getting somewhere?”

“I thought so, too, at first. And then I started second guessing. And you got busy and from where I was standing, it looked like you were withdrawing. And I never lost that fear that it would all blow up in my face. I was so close, so damn close, to what I always wanted that I was convinced it would be snatched away. I started doubting. And then I started wondering if the punishment was really over. And then I became convinced that you were just waiting for me to trust you again and then you'd fuck some guy at the last minute when it would hurt the most. And I knew I couldn’t cope with that. It would break me. But if _I_ fucked it up... I wouldn’t get hurt so much. And... I am such an asshole. It was extremely selfish of me. But I was just so scared all the time, Brian. I should have talked to you.”

He looked completely distressed... and scared. And I'd really missed him during the last two weeks, almost more than if he hadn't actually been there. I put out my arm and he took one big step into it, sighing a little as he put his arms around me. “I know it’s out of character, Justin, but I want this. I wanted it last year and I want it now. It’s not for you. It’s not some game I’m playing. I want this. For me. For us.”

He took a few shaky breaths, but when he looked up at me his eyes were clear. He really wasn’t a teenager anymore, he hadn’t had an ‘allergy’ attack since the night he left for New York, at least not in front of me. And maybe he was right. Maybe it was time that we both grew up and stopped playing games all the time. It seemed that nowadays the games were painful even when I had the upper hand. I didn’t blame him for mistrusting me when I was behaving out of character. I had certainly given him enough reasons over the years. I smiled down at him. “Can we get to the make-up sex now?”

We kissed, softly at first, slowly washing away the hurt and healing the wounds we had inflicted on each other. Then it turned into beautiful, open-mouthed, sloppy kisses, accompanied by groping hands and disappearing clothes. Luckily, my desk was practically empty already from when I'd used it as a foot rest. He lay back on it, while I got myself ready with a condom and lube from the top drawer. His feet were behind my head when I pushed into him, but I took his legs and put them around my waist so that I could kiss him while I thrust into him. There had been way too many fucks without kissing.

“I love you,” he sighed when we were done.

I was stuck to him by sweat and cum, trying to get my heartbeat and breathing back under control and all I could do was nod. He was carding his fingers through my hair and his other hand was stroking my back. Then I got up gently and pulled out of him. If I waited any longer, we would have to go on a fishing expedition for the condom. I couldn’t wait for the time when we wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. He sat up on the edge of the desk and put one hand on my hip, the other against my cheek.

“I've tried to drag you along with me into a relationship for so long, I get very nervous when you step ahead of me. It seems to put me off balance. I had to get used to you being alright with this.”

“I am alright with this, Justin. I want this. I want to fuck you raw.” I cupped his cheek and rubbed my thumb over his cheekbone. Took a deep breath. “I love you.”

“Me too,” he smiled. “And I’m no longer afraid. I won’t fuck up again. Not now that I understand what was really bothering me about it. And I’m so, so sorry for what I did to you. I love you. I want this. I’m ready.”

I nodded and put my forehead against his. “How about we forget everything? Clean slate for both of us. No more tallying up our respective fuck-ups. No more second guessing each other. If I say I want to stop tricking you believe me and if you say you’re ready I believe you.”

“Okay,” he said and kissed me again and we both knew we wouldn’t be doing much of anything other than fucking for the remainder of the weekend.

 

It wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. We talked a lot and that helped. Justin wanted to make absolutely sure that there would be no more misunderstandings. And I wasn’t stupid. Just because talking made me uncomfortable, didn’t mean that I hadn’t worked out over the years that it was preferable to a major fuck-up. And Justin finally understood that it wasn't so easy to talk about fears and insecurities when they were your own, or even just to recognize them.

Eventually, I understood. Justin mistrusted things that were just handed to him. When he came out at seventeen, he went from daddy’s pride and joy to being disowned, from teacher’s pet to pariah, from being popular to becoming the punching bag for every homophobic prick in the school. All the things that had seemed to come so easily to him before and that he had taken for granted had been taken away from him almost overnight. After that, he had to fight for every little thing he wanted, even me. Especially me. Just because he'd turned out a proud and successful homosexual in the end, didn’t mean that it hadn’t affected him.

So whenever I handed him things on a platter instead of forcing him to pry every last step forward in our relationship from my reluctant hands, he got thrown off balance. It wasn’t so much a case of, ‘if it isn’t hard to get, it’s not worth it’. It was more like, ‘if it isn’t hard to get, it will be taken away’. It happened after the proposal and it happened after I suggested monogamy out of the blue, when he was just gearing up to fight for it.

The five years in New York hadn’t been a bed of roses for him. I might have reached a point at the end there, when I took my equal share of the load, but that was only after a long drawn-out struggle to drag me there. It had started out almost like his time in LA, when he'd tried so hard to keep us going and I had shot down all his efforts because he wasn’t coming home anyway. New York wasn’t quite that bad. I'd already decided that taking what I could get for as long as I could have it was the way to go. Justin was the one who insisted at all times that it was the separation that was temporary, not the relationship. It must have been a painful, solitary struggle for him. He must have had doubts sometimes that I would pull all the way through to the end with him.

So he mistrusted his good fortune. Things that seemed too good to be true usually were. He knew that and I knew that. I didn’t blame him for being wary of me. Over the years, I had done some pretty shitty things to him, on top of denying my feelings for him all the way. He didn’t think I could stop tricking? Let’s face it, I'd never given him any indication that he might be wrong. Just because I had gradually come to realize that it didn’t define me any longer, didn’t mean that I actually made him aware of the fact. In fact, not wanting to look like a love-sick fool, I'd made damn sure that he didn’t know. He'd never had any reason to think that anything had changed and he was too far away to observe the gradual decline of my tricking. He had thought I was going cold turkey.

As for him thinking that I might lull him into a false sense of security on our second try for monogamy, just so that I could fuck it up to hurt him when it would have the most impact? Deliberately? Yeah, that sounded suspiciously like something I would do. So he was wrong both times, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have reasons to feel that way. I'd given him plenty of them over the years and I'd used tricking to punish him both times, after Caspar and after he came home. And as for not being aware of his fears and subconsciously sabotaging things to prevent himself from getting hurt? Been there, done that, practically invented it.

Justin had fucked up, twice, and I'd gotten hurt, but I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t acknowledge that I had a tendency to fuck up just as spectacularly. So he wasn’t perfect and he wasn’t always strong and he didn’t always get it right. In a sense, it was a relief. I wasn’t a saint, it would be too hard to live with one. In the end, we both came out of it with a better understanding of the other’s insecurities and that could only stand us in good stead in the future.

At the furthest reaches of my mind, there would always be a part of me waiting for the thud of the other shoe dropping. More than ten years of Justin steadily loving me hadn’t changed that. At the back of Justin’s mind, there would always be the nagging fear that I would hurt him. My gradual development into a halfway decent partner hadn’t changed that yet; maybe it never would, just like I would never stop expecting him to leave one day. We would both have to live with that.

In all the years we'd been together, Justin had always  been the compass for both of us. He'd steered us from day one to where he thought we should and could go. I had resisted kicking and screaming for the longest time. Justin had been the glue that kept us together. When he came unstuck, we came unstuck. Now that he was back on track, I just fell in with him again.

Ten years was a long time. Our relationship was well defined now. Justin would always be the one who'd do the bigger share of the emotional lifting. It was a surprise that he'd stumbled when I'd been quicker off the mark than he for once, but I had learned my lesson. And how likely was it, that I would ever again be ready before him to take us further? If there even was a further. So he couldn’t cope with me taking the lead with the relationship stuff? No problem, that suited me just fine. I vowed to never, ever step out in front of him again. He was so much better at these things it was easy to just step aside to let him lead and then simply fall in behind him.

So I promised myself that in future I would stick with what worked for us: I would follow him.

 

 

**EPILOGUE**

Justin and I were lying on the couch after our third fuck of the night. The TV was on, but it was on mute and neither one of us was paying any attention.

Things had been great between us. We’d been fucking raw for about eight months now and it was everything I'd thought it might be. The sensation was incredible. Justin said it was the same for him. He loved the feeling of my come splattering inside him. He loved how it would stay there and remind him of me. He loved the fact that I could now stay inside him until my cock went soft and simply slid out. And he also loved the emotional side of it: the trust that bare-backing implied on both sides. He loved the fact that he was my first in this and I was his. I agreed with him on that one. I had wanted to give him that so badly; it made _me_ happy somehow that it made him so happy. Go figure.

I didn’t tell Michael for quite a while, but he worked it out anyway. He'd made his decision when he took up with Ben, but it seemed unkind to rub his face in it. He just laughed and said there were millions of couples out there who could do what he and Ben never could. One more wouldn’t make any difference. But he never asked what it was like and I never spoke about it.

Finn had never made another appearance. Justin had joined another study group or rather, his group had broken up and reformed, sans Finn and Fiona. There were two new guys now, who looked straight to me and even if they weren’t, Justin was in a different place now. Vera was still there and she always blushed rather endearingly when she saw me.

Justin’s show last year had been another success. It was smaller than the one the year before, but it was a travelling exhibition that rotated to another city every month for a year. At the moment it was in San Francisco. Justin had to attend every opening and stay two or three days for promotional purposes. I was getting used to being eye candy. Sometimes we pretended that I was dumb as shit and he was my sugar daddy. Once I was a patron who would only buy a painting if the starving artist would put out. It led to a really hot fuck in one of the storerooms at the gallery. Justin said I played obnoxious very well. It was all great fun.  

Daphne had returned in the summer and was now working at the UPMC. She and Justin were pretty tight still. Justin was very happy to have her back and I was glad there would be no more Daphne substitutes in his life. It was easier on my nerves this way.

Today I'd come home late. It was March and we were starting to get busy for the summer campaigns again. Justin was in the kitchen, making himself a snack, but he started to heat up some real food for us instead, when he saw me come in. I was sitting at the table talking about my day, while he was busy with the microwave.

There was another fundamental truth about Justin: he could get me hard just walking across the room, minding his own business. We fucked on the kitchen floor, rather disgustingly using olive oil for lube. We really should start storing a supply of lube in here, but Justin refused because Mrs. Hanson used the kitchen more than either of us. Then we ate and went upstairs to fuck in the shower and change into clean clothes.

We started off by watching the news but lost track soon after that when the movie he had selected turned out to be a real dud. We probably would have gotten distracted anyway, even if the movie had been great. Fucking raw never got old.

So, we were lying on the couch, naked and satiated. He was resting on top of me, his head on my chest. I was playing with his hair. Life was good. We'd come incredibly far from where we had started out. Even I could admit that. I could also admit that I liked it. Of course, it was all down to him. He'd come and taken my hand and, apart from a few minor stumbles along the way, he had never let go. He had led us here. And here was great. Here I wanted to stay.

Justin was telling me about the ultrasound scan he'd gone to with Daphne. She was five months pregnant and the father had bailed – with plenty of encouragement from her. The prospect of being a single mother didn’t faze her in the slightest. She was now running one of the day clinics, so at least she had regular hours and if anyone could pull off being a busy doctor and bringing up a child alone, it was Daphne.

“She wants me to be at the birth. Can you believe it? She said it would be okay because I’ve seen it all before. I can’t wait. I can’t imagine anything more exciting than seeing a baby being born. I feel so honored that she wants me there.”

“Rather you than me.”

“And with me becoming the godfather as well, it will be almost as if it was mine.”

“Yeah, but you know that she’s only doing all this so that she can use you as a free babysitter any time she needs one, don’t you?”

He laughed and pinched my side playfully. We fell quiet again for some time. He was drawing fantasy patterns on my chest with his finger, while I kept playing with his hair. Then an idea occurred to me and I remembered how much fun it was to genuinely surprise him. I took a deep breath and, smirking in anticipation of his reaction, I asked: “So, do you ever think about fathering a child of your own?”

 

THE END.

 


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